


Coming Undone

by Eilowyn



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Southern Vampire Mysteries - Charlaine Harris, True Blood (TV)
Genre: Multi, anyway bill compton is the worst, i edited the tags because they were a mess, i got a beef with alan ball and a beef with joss whedon, i'm in quarantine and bored, this is mostly me screaming into the void, this isn't an objective and diplomatic fic, this was written circa 2013?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:09:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 37,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23323723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eilowyn/pseuds/Eilowyn
Summary: The Authority has fallen, Bill drank the Kool-Aid, became Bilith, and now he's gunning for Sookie. In a world where the proverbial shit has hit the fan, Eric Northman has only one person to call about killing a vampire god: the Slayer.
Relationships: Eric Northman/Sookie Stackhouse, Spike/Buffy Summers, Whatever my twisted crossover multi-ship mind comes up with
Comments: 37
Kudos: 78





	1. There's a Bad Moon on the Rise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ineedyoursway](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineedyoursway/gifts).



> Warning: These notes will likely turn out to be word vomit, where I mostly moan and complain about how such a good show could become so terrible, including my armchair quarterback takes on What Went Wrong.
> 
> Hello, friend! Like me, you're probably in quarantine. It's a bitch. Anyway, my big thing right now, the thing that's keeping me occupied, is re-litigating What Went Wrong with True Blood. I have never had a nastier show break-up before. I mean, I've quit shows in a self-righteous huff, but nothing compares to my disappointment with True Blood. Even though I stopped watching in season 6, I still watched that damn finale even though at the same time I could have been watching Beyoncé on MTV in front of a giant fucking sign that says FEMINIST, which could be considered my religion.
> 
> Ugh.
> 
> Anyway, my first thought after seeing the end of season 5 of True Blood was that Bilith is a Big Bad in classic Buffy style. If Eric were smart (and universes could be combined), he would have aligned himself with the Slayer, and together they would have kicked Bilith’s ass (assuming Bilith remained a big bad instead of turning into such a weenie). So, that’s how basic premise for this fic came about. 
> 
> Takes place after episode 5.12 of True Blood. It is a post-Chosen world, and season 5 of Angel has been stretched out over a few years. Vampires are out of the closet, Potentials are now Slayers, Angel is Wolfram & Hart’s CEO, and the Sanguinistas have overthrown the Authority. 
> 
> Basic timeline: (2003) Slayer spell cast, Sunnydale Hellmouth closes; (2004) Great Revelation, vampires out of the closet; (2005) Sookie meets Bill, (2006) Sookie returns from Faerie, (2007) Bill drinks Lilith’s blood, and our story begins. There will be some anachronisms, but I don’t think anything circa 2013 being mentioned in 2007 will be so glaring as to annoy anyone.
> 
> Also, because I am a huge Tina Marjorino fan (loved her in Veronica Mars!) I was thrilled to see her as Molly in season 5 of True Blood, and I’ve decided to keep her alive for this fic. Because why the fuck not.
> 
> Parts of this first chapter may resemble the first chapter of TexanLady’s “We Stand Together,” probably because that was the inspirational catalyst for writing my own story. It is meant to be in emulation only, and all credit for ideas similar to TexanLady’s should go to her. Of course, this note was written seven years ago and I have no idea where to find her fic because I'm out of touch with whatever's happening on Wordpress, which is where the True Blood fandom congregates.
> 
> I'm going to try and update every week, but like I don't know what I'm doing or if I even have the discipline to continuously write a multi-chapter fic, so consider yourself warned. I don't even have an outline, just something color-coded with a schedule of what, theoretically, would happen on each day. And most of what I have written was written circa 2013, so it could be a mess. I do know that there are various shifts in tone because my writing's changed so much in the intervening seven years, so expect incoherence.
> 
> Yeah. Fuck it, let's do this!
> 
> This chapter recreates some scenes from True Blood episode 5.10, so the words are not mine.
> 
> Disclaimer: Buffy et. al. belong to Joss; Sookie et. al. belong to Charlaine, I just treat them better.

** Chapter One: There’s A Bad Moon on the Rise **

**_Prologue: By the Pricking of My Thumbs_ **

**London, England 5:06 am**

Buffy Summers dreamed.

If she were capable of analyzing her dreams while asleep, she would have found the prospect of a Slayer dream to be a nice respite from always having to relive Spike’s last moments and final death. Seeing him burst into flame had been a nightly ritual for years now, and she always woke up with feelings of longing, guilt, and sadness. Only Dawn had noticed this trend, but she never spoke to her sister about it.

In Buffy’s dream, she saw a vial of red blood. The dream scene expanded to show the vial being held by a blood-soaked, dark-haired man. There was a pool of gore next to him, and on the far side of the room stood two other figures—a tall blond man all in black, and a blonde woman. They were pleading with the dark-haired man, and Buffy could hear every word.

“So, Lilith appeared to you as well?”

He had a Southern accent. Buffy didn’t know who the guy was, so she decided to name him Rhett Butler.

The blond man spoke. Let’s call him Steve Rogers.

“Only to savage and obliterate my maker.”

 _Fuck_ , Buffy thought, inside her dream. _Vampires_.

Steve Rogers continued. “She’s a mad god, Bill—” _God_ , Buffy thought, _WTF_? “She’s nothing but destruction. So _don’t do it_.”

Buffy knew how this scene would play out. Whatever Steve Rogers didn’t want Rhett Butler to do, he was totally gonna do it, but she was in a slayer dream and couldn’t control it.

“So you can?” Rhett said.

“Pour it in the fucking fire,” Steve replied. # _TeamSteve_ , Buffy decided.

“You’ll never stop me,” Rhett insisted. This being a slayer dream, she could already predict she’d have to be the one to stop him. Her dreams were formulaic like that. It always came down to Buffy saving the day. After so many years, having to save the world from imminent doom had become cliché.

Steve: “So why’d you authorize our entry, then? You knew we would try.”

Rhett: “Because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get Salome on my own.”

Finally, the woman spoke. Let’s call her Jennifer. “Bill, this isn’t you.”

 _The vampire’s name is Bill?_ Buffy found herself actually disappointed. _How lame is that_? If it were her choice she'd continue to call him Rhett Butler, but if she were honest Bill had absolutely nothing on Clark Gable. He really was just kind of _meh_.

Bill: “What the fuck do you know about me? For all you know everything I did was an act, calculated to elicit a particular response.”

Jennifer: “I know that’s not true!”

Jennifer was crying, but Bill didn’t care. Steve Rogers was standing still, steadfast, just like Captain America would.

“Why, because of the light you bear?” Bill sneered. “Did you ever consider the possibility that it’s a handicap? One that blinds you to the most obvious of truths: that you are an abomination, just like the Vampire Bible states.”

 _Whoa, harsh_! Buffy thought. _And what the fuck? There’s a Vampire Bible?_ Had Giles been holding out on her? Not that she’d actually read the books, she conceded.

Jennifer was pleading with Bill, but he wouldn’t listen.

“I have spent my entire life as a vampire apologizing, believing I was inherently wrong somehow, living in fear. Fear that God had forsaken me, that I was damned.”

 _Shit_ , Buffy grumbled to herself. _He’s monologuing_. And she didn’t want to engage in the introspection that was shouting at her, _YOU KNOW WHO HE SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE?!?!_ She wasn’t big on introspection, even in her dreams. Especially not this introspection.

“But Lilith grants us freedom from fear. Vicissitudes 9:24. ‘Fear not, for my blood is beyond fear, fear of sin, fear of mankind, fear of retribution, for thou art begat by God. And this world is but a spring to slake thy sacred thirst.”

 _This Lilith chick sounds crazy_. Again, Buffy ignored the introspection that told her who _that_ sounded exactly like.

Jennifer tried one last time. “If I ever meant anything to you at all—”

“I told you the first night we met,” Bill told her, full of disdain. “Vampires often turn on those they love the most.”

Buffy watched as Bill drank the blood in the vial. He began to convulse, and Jennifer backed up while Steve Rogers moved her behind him in a protective gesture. Bill began bleeding from his eyes and his mouth, and Buffy watched in repulsion as the blood poured over his body. Suddenly his head imploded, and he quickly dissolved into a puddle of scarlet blood and gore.

Jennifer clung to Steve Rogers, sobbing while he stared at the puddle in horror. Buffy tried to wake up, but the scene wasn’t over: even as Steve tried to comfort Jennifer, something was happening to the puddle. A figure rose from it, re-forming Bill, but naked and covered in blood. Ew.

“Fuck!” Jennifer shouted frantically. Bill didn’t respond. He was now fully reformed with his body drenched in red, and he growled menacingly at the two in the room with him.

“RUN!” Steve shouted as he and Jennifer bounded down the hall.

Buffy bolted up in bed, gasping in terror. Dawn, sleeping in the room’s other bed, grumbled as she slowly came up from sleep. She reached for the bedside lamp and glanced at Buffy, whose heavy breathing was the only sound in the room.

“Buff, what is it?” Dawn asked with a yawn.

Buffy turned to her sister, still gasping, eyes wide and terrified. She took a few more breaths before she met Dawn’s eyes, her voice only a whisper as she spoke.

“Lilith.”

**_Day 1 – Part I: Bad Moon Rising_ **

**New Orleans, Louisiana 12:37 am**

The thing that was once Bill Compton growled inhumanly.

There was only one thing to do.

“ _RUN!_ ”

Eric grabbed Sookie’s hand, pulling her out of the stupor she fell in after seeing her first love turn into a monster. She slipped and fell on the remains of a vampire, and he swept her up into his arms, using vampire speed to get to the nearest elevator. Sookie was gasping when he put her down after setting the elevator to go up, and he caught his own unneeded breath as the doors closed. In the fluorescent lighting, Sookie looked incredibly pale.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded. He was about to question her further when he felt the elevator give a jolt and stop suddenly, which was quickly followed by the power going out. Eric reached across Sookie to the elevator buttons, trying to see if anything still worked.

“Fuck! Power’s out!”

Sookie quickly used her fairy powers to create a ball of light that illuminated the confines of the elevator. “Can we make it through the elevator shaft?” she asked frantically.

Eric was already clawing through the ceiling, only to find it welded shut. He began punching it repeatedly, using vampire force to pry the thing open. After several unsuccessful punches, Sookie decided to take things into her own hands and shot some of her light power towards the dented metal Eric had been working on.

“Nice,” he said, grabbing Sookie and lifting her up through the ceiling before following her out. Inside the elevator shaft, Eric picked Sookie up and flew towards the nearest entryway. She shifted in his arms and used her light beam to open the elevator doors, and Eric set her on the ledge before pulling himself through the open gap. They found themselves on the level where they kept the prisoners, dozens of naked, crying humans, and what appeared to be a young vampire.

“Eric!”

Molly, the techno-geek vampire, was still alive – or at least, undead. Eric raced to her cell, pulling Sookie behind him.

“What’s going on?” Molly asked.

“The Authority has fallen, Bill drank the last of Lilith’s blood, and now he’s… something else.” He looked towards Sookie. “Do you think you can use your fairy power to free her? She’s with us.”

Sookie looked at Eric’s solemn face and nodded. Her light hit the lock on the barred door, easily dispensing with the mechanism that held the cell closed, as the power outage had disabled every security device except for the physical lock itself. Eric pulled the gate open, and Molly came out, slow and weakened with silver poisoning, but still faster than a human.

“Eric! The prisoners!” Sookie demanded as some of the wailing humans began to take notice of their presence.

Eric sniffed, frustrated at what he considered a waste of time. “If you’re going to do it, do it fast!”

Sookie used her light, opening every cellblock and urging the liberated humans to follow them to freedom.

“I know a way out!” Molly said, and led the way through the cellblock, Eric picking Sookie up again so they could run at vampire speed, the humans following behind.

“Go up!” Sookie urged them as Eric rushed her up the floors, climbing for the surface, knowing Bill would be hot on their heels.

Molly led them to the garage, pointing out a giant SUV. After disabling another locking mechanism for the SUV’s doors with Sookie’s light, Eric began hotwiring the car while Sookie jumped in the passenger side and Molly hopped in the back.

Once the car was running, they sped out of the underground garage, but were followed by the building going up in flames behind them. Eric drove the SUV towards an alleyway where he could feel Pam, though he could tell she was frantic with worry. He slammed the breaks once he saw the others, and Pam, Nora, Tara, Jessica and Jason piled in. He heard Sookie breathe a sigh of relief at the sight of her brother and friends.

“I think it’s time to ditch this party,” Eric drawled once everyone was seated, and he peeled out of the area surrounding the now burning building.

“The humans!” Sookie worried, but Eric didn’t spare a moment.

“We gave them a chance,” he told her, “but we know Bill’s coming for us.”

In the rearview mirror he could see a figure covered in red storm out of the fire, untouched, and take to the air. Looked like Bill made it out safely. He’d have to contemplate what that would mean later.

“I don’t think he’s following us,” Tara said, looking out the SUV’s rear window.

Jason sneered. “Unless he’s flying over our heads like an evil, naked Superman!”

Sookie looked back at her irritated brother, then turned to Eric. “I think that if Bill or... whatever that was wanted to kill us,” she reasoned, “we’d be dead already.”

It was a possibility that set Eric’s mind to his years of traveling with Godric, and the nights when his Maker would teach him the game of chess. _Always protect your queen_ , Godric taught him. He gave a wary look at Sookie, then began making moves and counter-moves in his head as he turned the SUV towards a safe house he had set up on Lake Pontchartrain.

“Yeah, she’s right,” he warned Nora. “He let us get away.”

“For now, maybe,” his sister conceded. “But if Bill’s been reborn in Lilith’s image—”

Eric cut her off. “We don’t know that. We don’t know what he is.”

They drove on in silence. Eric turned on the radio to a news station. A report on Governor Burrell’s anti-Vampire speech earlier that evening did nothing to ease the tension within the vehicle, so Eric quickly turned it off. Next to him, he could hear Sookie start to sniffle quietly, trying to keep the tears at bay. Without glancing at her, he reached out and grabbed her hand, squeezing it reassuringly, and holding it for the rest of the drive.

“Eric?” Pam asked, interrupting the quiet. “Who the fuck is Mary Poppins and can I please kill her?”

Eric rolled his eyes, knowing this was coming. His eyes met Nora’s in the rearview mirror, and she gave him a “ _told you so”_ look that could only be shared between siblings.

“She’s my sister.”

Pam scoffed. “In over a hundred years you never thought to mention, ‘Hey, by the way, I have this super irritating sister. Wait ‘til you meet her. You’re really gonna hate her guts!”

“I had no reason to.” Even if breathing were unnecessary, Eric tried to calm himself with deep breaths, but there was no stopping Pam.

“Other than the fact that I’ve shared my entire life with you and all you do is lie to me and—”

This wasn’t the time for Pam to throw a tantrum. “Bill is out there, and he could be coming for us. The State of Louisiana basically just declared war on us. This is not the right time.”

“Why? Don’t you trust me?”

Eric curbed the behavior of progeny. “Get over it and have my back or get out of my face.” Pam slumped back into the seat in a huff. Eric could hear Tara’s muttered “ _asshole_ ,” and he was man enough to admit he deserved it, but he didn’t care. He continued to drive, stewing in his seat.

Eric was drawn out of his thoughts by Sookie’s quiet voice. “So, where are we going? What are we gonna do now?”

He turned to look at her. “I have a safe house near here. It’s light-tight, safe, and has one hell of a security system. Bill won’t be able to get in, and we need time to regroup and see what’s left of vampire society since the Sanguinistas took over the Authority.”

Sookie merely nodded.

“Whatever is left of vampire society?” Nora interjected from the back, leaning between the two front seats to join the conversation. “Last time I checked, regents were grabbing for all the territory they could manage, fighting amongst themselves, squabbling like children without a parent to mediate. That sort of chaos would have pleased Salome, but it does nothing to help us now.”

“Thank you, Nora, for that update,” Eric deadpanned. “Do you have a better idea?”

Nora rolled her eyes at her brother. “No, but informing you of the situation seemed necessary.”

“The kings and queens are fightin’ each other?” Sookie turned towards Nora, making eye contact with the mysterious woman she knew only as Eric’s sister for the first time. The two sized each other up, feeling an antipathy between them that originated with their roles in Eric’s life.

“Yes, everything’s a mess,” Nora continued, “the sheriffs don’t know what to do, and vampires are hungry and attacking humans at an alarming rate. It’s a gigantic clusterfuck, and you have Compton to thank for that one.” Nora’s disdain for Bill was like ice in her voice.

“What did Bill do?” Sookie looked at Eric this time.

“Bill decided it would be a good idea to bomb the Tru Blood factories,” Eric explained with derision. “That was before he began killing Chancellors because he thought he was the Chosen One of Lilith.”

“If the reformation of his body is as you say, Bill very well could be Lilith reborn,” Nora reasoned. “There would be truth to the Book of Lilith.” Her eyes widened as the idea that the vampire holy book was right.

“If it is true, Lilith is an idiot and should be ended all the sooner. What kind of god is she that she would think that turning humans against us at this time would be good for vampires?” Eric sneered at the thought “It’s likely to get all of us killed.”

“Love the strategy meeting, Captain,” Pam interrupted, pushing Nora aside so that she could look at her maker. “But don’t you think the theology debate you and the Queen Eliza _bitch_ here are having isn’t at the top of our priorities?”

“Our priority is deciding what we’re to do next,” Eric told his prickly child. “If that discussion includes mention of a would-be god, then yes, theology is part of it. Now sit back down, Pam, unless you have something worthwhile to contribute.”

“Don’t you be talkin’ to her that way!” The outrage in Tara’s voice carried through the car. “You released her; you can’t order her around no more!”

Jason Stackhouse decided this would be an opportune moment to add his input to the conversation. “Fuckin’ fangers!” he said. “Why the fuck would y’all want to raise some vampire god if it were only gonna make things worse?”

“I’ll be sure to ask Compton that next time I see him,” Eric snarked.

“Bill’s dead, isn’t he?” Jessica’s voice was small in the silence that followed Eric’s response to Jason.

Sookie turned around in her seat to look at the baby vamp. “I don’t know, sweetie,” she tried to soothe. “I do know that Bill isn’t the one in the driver’s seat right now.”

“Whole thing’s still his fault.” Pam was looking daggers at Sookie. “Think about it. He was Bill when he ordered the Tru Blood factories bombed. He was Bill when he chose to listen to Lilith. He was dear, sweet Bill when he drank the Lilith-flavored Kool-Aid. Billy boy is to blame for the shit storm we’re now in.” Sarcasm dripped from her lips as she crossed her arms in front of her, settling back into her seat with a pout. Jessica began crying harder, and Sookie sent Pam a glare.

“We’ll see what we can do to get Bill back, Jess,” Sookie reassured the baby vampire.

“If that’s even possible.” It certainly wasn’t a priority for Eric, and he didn’t sugarcoat the situation. He turned off the highway. “Right now we can’t worry about Bill. He may be a lost cause. We have to worry about ourselves.” He heard Sookie give a defeated sigh and noticed a single tear fall down her cheek.

He maneuvered the car past empty fields and into a more wooded area. Once Eric pulled the car up to a dilapidated antebellum mansion, Jason decided to voice his displeasure. “What the fuck? We’re gonna stay in that shack?”

“No, we’re staying _under_ that shack. I paid a lot of good money to build an underground apartment in spite of the water table. Now shut up and follow me.” Eric exited the car, using vampire speed to open the door for Sookie before she could do it herself. He grabbed her hand again and led the group towards the staircase leading to the mansion’s main floor. Once there, he pulled up a ragged, mud-stained rug that sat in front of a collapsed fireplace to show a trap door with an electronic panel alongside it. He put his thumb on a screen in the panel, and the door opened.

Sookie followed Eric down the staircase leading to a modestly furnished apartment under the house. The main room was made up of a living area, dining area and kitchen separated only by a breakfast bar. The open space was inviting with comfortable couches set in front of a large television, and a solid wood dining table with six chairs set to the side. There were three doors scattered around the room, each leading to a bedroom with en-suite bathroom. Eric situated Sookie on one of the couches next to her brother and began giving orders as everyone else settled on the furniture around the open floor plan.

“Nora, turn on the television and see if there’s any news of the fire in the Authority building. Molly, you’ll find a laptop in the first room to your left. See if you can find anything online about Burrell’s speech and how people are reacting to it. See if any connection has been made between the AVL and the bombing of the Tru Blood factories. This place is wired with wifi, so you shouldn’t have a problem. Stackhouse,” he said, looking towards Jason as Nora and Molly moved around to start their assignments, “get something for yourself and Sookie to eat. There’s human food in the kitchen. Jessica, Pam and Tara, there’s also Tru Blood in the fridge if you need it. All of my houses have a supply. We’re going to need all of it, I think.”

He glanced at Sookie’s desolate face. It was as if finally sitting down had released all the emotions she’d been holding back, trying to put on a brave face. “Do you want to take a shower?” he asked gently, demeanor completely different from the Viking chieftain ordering his people around of the last five minutes. At her nod, he held out his hand for hers and led her towards one of the rooms, closing the door behind them.

Sookie collapsed on the end of the large bed, overwhelmed with the goings-on of the past evening. Bill, her first love, was gone, and now some sort of monster had replaced him. His words had shocked and hurt her, and she felt lost, not knowing what was going to happen next. She tried to keep herself from seeking the comfort she knew Eric would offer, but it was, as always, hard to resist him when he was determined.

Eric had settled her on the bed before going into the bathroom and starting the shower. Once the water was at a comfortable temperature, he went back to Sookie, who looked absolutely devastated, and began to undress her. He didn't give his usual leering and innuendoes; in fact, there was barely anything sexual about his removal of Sookie’s clothing. Right now was about reassurance, comfort, doing for her when she couldn’t do for herself. He still cared deeply for her, was in love with her, in spite of his dalliances with Nora, and Sookie’s continued silence worried him no small amount.

He carried her into the bathroom and stood her in the shower, hoping the water would wake her from her stupor enough so that she could wash the blood and gore off herself. He had calls to make, but Sookie was still his top priority. 

“Do you think you’ll be all right by yourself?” He asked her. She hadn’t indicated any discomfort at his undressing her, something so out of character for the girl who wore her modesty like a mantle.

Sookie didn’t answer, wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“Sookie?” he asked again.

After a few moments of silence, Sookie gave way to a sob.

Eric toed off his boots, removed his jacket and threw it on the counter. Fully clothed, he stepped into the shower and held her as she cried. It sounded as if the weight of the world were on her shoulders, and he suspected that she was already blaming herself for any wrongdoing Bill would cause because she had been unable to reach him before he swallowed Lilith’s blood.

She rested her head on his shoulder as she cried, and he held onto her waist as if giving her a lifeline. The shower pounded into his back, soaking his remaining clothes as he allowed Sookie to cry, his hand stroking her naked back in reassuring movements, the gentleness of his touch belying the rage he felt towards Compton for putting her in this mess.

As the sobbing ebbed, she was able to look up into his face. Her eyes were red and her nose was running, but she looked as beautiful to him as she always did. He fought the urge to kiss her, instead pressing his lips to her forehead in a sexless gesture of comfort.

“Are you going to be okay?” he asked, meeting her eyes. She nodded, and he let go of her waist, letting her stand on her own. He left the bathroom to grab a towel and one of his large shirts for her to wear, placing them on the counter next to the sink.

“I’ll be in the next room, making phone calls,” he told her, and only received another nod in response. Realizing there was nothing else he could do for her at the moment, he left the bathroom for the bedroom. He tore off his clothes and grabbed a clean pair of jeans from the closet he always kept full in case of emergencies and grabbed his phone.

As he scrolled through his contacts, he thought back to Godric’s words in his last vision of him.

 _It is not I who must fight her_.

He recalled watching Lilith end his maker. _It is not I who must fight her_. Godric was always right. Eric had decided he needed to call on the one person who could possibly fight a vampire god.

During the drive to the safe house, Eric had come up with a tentative plan that could keep them all safe for the foreseeable future, even if it might not stop Bill from whatever devious machinations he had in store for them. Recalling Godric’s words, he knew he was doing the only thing he could. He dialed his contact, knowing he would likely be just waking up in London at this hour.

A young man with a lisp and an American accent answered. “Slayer’s Council. Rupert Giles’s cell phone, Andrew Wells speaking.”

“This is Eric Northman. Get me Rupert Giles immediately.”

The boy paused. Eric heard some interference as if someone covered the speaker on the phone, then a muffled “Mr. Giles—” followed by a far-away “not now” as the boy consulted the person Eric needed to speak to.

There was more interference as the boy put the phone back to his ear. “Mr. Giles is currently occupied, may I take a message?”

Eric closed his eyes, trying to calm himself. It didn’t exactly work, and his voice was steely cold when he spoke.

“No, you may _not_ take a fucking message, tell Rupert that Eric Northman’s on the phone this minute!”

“Geez, no need to be all cranky about it!” The boy sniffed, affronted, but he did what Eric asked. He had obviously taken the phone away from his ear, but Eric’s keen hearing discerned what he said. “Mr. Giles! There’s a something-Northman on the phone for you, and he’s in a very pissy mood!”

“Northman?” Eric could hear Giles in the background. “Andrew, why didn’t you say so?”

There was the sound of a commotion over the phone as it was handed off, but the next voice Eric heard was that of the man he wanted to speak to.

“Eric? Eric Northman?”

“Yes, Rupert.”

“Good heavens, man, what is happening? The slayers have had dreams about a man covered in blood, Parliament’s declaring war on vampires, Tru Blood factories are going up in flames, and Buffy’s come up with the name Lilith. What on Earth is going on in America?”

Eric closed his eyes. He should be grateful that the Slayers had alerted Rupert to the problem, but he knew it would still be hard to explain this clusterfuck.

Eric had met Rupert Giles in New York at a summit shortly before Sookie had walked into Fangtasia, smelling of sunshine and summer days and turning his world inside out. The first anniversary of the Great Revelation had just passed, and it was two years after a spell had been cast that had activated all potential Slayers in the world, though this was not common knowledge outside the supernatural community.

Sophie-Anne had sent Eric as her representative to the summit, and he’d been seated next to Rupert for the length of the conference. Eric had respected the Englishman’s common sense as a settlement was arranged wherein the Slayers would spare all Authority-affiliated vampires, as long as they continued the mainstreaming movement. There were still plenty of demons for the army of girls to fight, after all. Both Rupert and Eric agreed to stay in contact, and the two men had formed a rapport between them over the intervening years.

Eric began, trying to be succinct. “The man covered in blood is named Bill Compton. He is a child of Lorena Krasiki, turned during the Civil War. Recently he was the King of Louisiana, part of the mainstreaming movement. He drank the blood of Lilith and then… became something else.”

He sighed, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “I don’t know what his plans are,” Eric continued, “but the Authority was taken over by a faction of vampires called the Sanguinistas, dedicated to ending the mainstreaming movement and bringing about the apocalypse spoken of in the Book of Lilith. They’re the ones behind the bombing of the Tru Blood factories, forcing vampires to feed on humans again.”

Rupert interrupted. “What!? The Book of Lilith? Surely Roman wouldn’t allow this madness to happen!” Roman Zimojic, the late Guardian, had also been at the summit, and Rupert Giles had appreciated his dedication to harmonious cohabitation.

“Roman has met the true death, Rupert. Russell Edgington was freed, and he killed Roman. It was a hostile takeover, and I didn’t know how to stop it. I had to play along, just to get us out of there.” Eric’s voice was low as he recalled the events that led to Bill ingesting the blood of Lilith. He wasn’t entirely innocent in the fall of the Authority, and he wasn't entirely ashamed of the mayhem he had caused in New Orleans, but it was almost as if he feared Rupert’s disappointment when the other man learned of it.

While he focused on his conversation with the Watcher, he could hear Sookie sobbing again under the sound of the shower. He greatly desired to go to her, but this conversation had to take precedence for the moment.

“Dear God, this is terrible!” Rupert was saying. “With Roman gone, there’s no telling what the Sanguinistas are capable of, even without this Compton drinking the blood of Lilith! It could be an all-out war!”

“Exactly, Rupert. That’s why I’m calling you. I need the Slayer here in Louisiana as soon as possible. I’m certain I know Compton’s first target ... a fae telepath named Sookie Stackhouse.” He heard the shower turn off, and a few moments later Sookie stepped out of the bathroom, hair wet and swimming in his large shirt. She gave him a small smile, and padded to the bed, sitting quietly next to him.

“Fae, you say?” Rupert was questioning. “But I thought they sealed themselves off in their own realms centuries ago!”

“Well, one of them returned to this realm, mated with a human, and a few generations later Sookie was born, telepathic and with some fairy powers.” Sookie looked at him nervously, not knowing whom he was telling her secrets to. Eric held out his hand to grasp hers reassuringly. He knew he was taking a chance telling Rupert about Sookie. It was a risk, but the Watcher wasn’t like Travers or any of the other leaders of the old Council. And Rupert knew the Slayer – the real one, the original one – and she was the only person he would entrust with Sookie’s safety.

“What is the relationship between Compton and this Miss Stackhouse? Why will he go after her?” Rupert’s question was innocent, but Eric still felt a pang in his heart as he was reminded of what Sookie and Compton had meant to each other. He himself had only experienced Sookie’s love while he had amnesia, and a part of him was slightly bitter that he never had the chance to be with her with all of his faculties intact. 

“Compton... loved her, I think. But I also think he was obsessed with Sookie before he joined the Sanguinistas.” Eric met Sookie’s eyes again, half expecting her to come up with some defense of Compton. She always seemed all too ready to forgive him for the shit he pulled. Instead, she just lowered her eyes.

Eric continued. “I don’t know his next move, but Sookie is a target and I won’t have her harmed.” It pained him to have to rely on someone else to protect her, but he knew that he would be busy trying to salvage whatever was left of vampire society and the mainstreaming movement while trying to fend off the anti-vampire backlash stirring up worldwide. As much as he’d like to remain with her, Eric realized it wasn’t possible to stay with Sookie all the time.

Rupert hummed in thought before speaking again as if contemplating everything he had just heard. “My team and I will fly out of London this afternoon. We’ll probably land in New Orleans sometime tomorrow night. We can discuss this further once we’ve arrived in Louisiana.”

Eric nodded at the other man’s practicality. “I’ll have cars waiting at the airport to drive you to one of my estates. There will be plenty of room for all of you, and it's where I house the library I... inherited from my Maker.”

A small snort was heard over the phone line. “Casually mentioning Godric's library to sweeten the deal, Eric?"

Eric gave a rare smile. "If the prophecies and ancient vampire texts don't appeal to you, surely the Guttenberg Bible is enough reason to come and visit?" 

“Yes, you certainly know my weaknesses. I’ll have my colleague Willow Rosenberg email you our flight information. There will be ... seven of us coming; myself, the Slayer, and a few of our associates.” Eric nodded at Rupert’s words, smiling at Sookie. “Once we get a plan of action in motion, I can activate more Slayers and have them come as backup, if necessary. The entire Slayer army will be available. Compton ... Lilith ... whomever this is, must be taken down before the Sanguinista movement expands any further.”

“If Burrell succeeds in his anti-vampire agenda, mainstreamers won’t have any choice but to join the Sanguinistas to protect themselves from humans. Human-vampire war would be inevitable.” Eric’s voice leveled as he contemplated the current shit storm, giving Rupert an indication of what he feared would be happening if Compton wasn’t stopped.

“Yes, exactly. This debacle mustn’t get out of hand. I will see you tomorrow. Goodbye, Eric.” Rupert hung up the phone.

“Who was that?” Sookie asked, quietly. She still held his hand.

“Rupert Giles, a friend. He’s coming here and bringing someone to protect you.” He set aside his phone and turned towards her, raising his empty hand to her cheek. “I promise you, we will get through this. I’m calling in all my markers, getting all my allies ready.”

“Is it really that bad?” Her voice wavered as she took in the severity of the situation.

“It could get very bad, but you will be safe. I’m bringing in the strongest warrior I know to protect you.”

“Who is it?” Her forehead wrinkled in question.

“The Slayer.”

He saw that the certainty in his voice reassured her, even though she wanted to ask who this Slayer was. Instead of questioning him, she kissed the palm of his hand, and it took all his control to keep from leaning in and kissing her at that moment. She may not be with him, but that changed nothing of his feelings, those dreaded emotions that had thrown him when he first started feeling them for Sookie.

He would protect her with every asset he had, every ally he could find; every bone in his very body.

Sookie would be safe.

The Slayer was coming.


	2. A Brief Anthropological History of Vampire-Human Relations and Religious Customs, from Prehistory to the Present

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Giles gives exposition, Xander tries to make jokes. Angel tries to give orders, Spike pisses him off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends!
> 
> We have another chapter. We have two more after this, and then it's the end of everything I originally wrote in 2013, give or take some bits and pieces that don't exactly fit anywhere yet. I'm still flying by the seat of my pants with no actual outline, mostly because I'm worried the outline will get murky heading towards the climax and I'll never finish it. We'll see what happens.
> 
> Also, I am contemplating a True Blood rewatch podcast. Called "Bill Compton is the Worst: A True Blood Rewatch Podcast," running on the thesis that everything bad about True Blood originates with the decision to make Bill Compton the male lead. I would be doing it with my sister, who currently needs a distraction because her June wedding may be canceled and she's really depressed about that. Is anyone interested? 
> 
> Further notes: We get some very Giles-y exposition on vampire anthropology which I used to reconcile the different conceptions of vampires in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and True Blood. I had fun writing it, though it is heavy.
> 
> Also, I have little to no knowledge of video games. All information contained in this chapter has been pulled out of my ass.

**_Day 1 – Part II: Exposition_ **

**London, England 8:13 am**

Rupert Giles ended the call with Eric Northman, placing his cell phone on a side table, and then reached for his glasses to give them a good polishing. It was an action that he always found comfort in – something he could do while he collected his thoughts. He looked up at his colleagues – the Scoobies, as the children were wont to call themselves, though they were no longer children – and prepared to inform them of the events that could lead to the downfall of the human race itself, if the forces of evil went unstopped. They found themselves in a situation that they had never before faced, even with all their combined battle experience.

Ever since vampires had taken it upon themselves to go public, the nature of being a Slayer had completely changed. When the vampires first came out of the coffin, so to speak, Rupert had tried to explain to the children how there were two kinds of vampires, and that the ones they knew in Sunnydale were a breed apart from the kind they now saw on the news, the ones revealing themselves and lobbying for rights in the American political system.

After the destruction of Sunnydale, Rupert had been working to re-establish an organization to support the Slayers activated by the Scythe, using the bank accounts of the old Council – of which he now found himself sole custodian – to form a new association in London from which operations worldwide would be carried out.

The Slayers Council, as it was called, was the brainchild of Buffy, and for four years now they’d worked with the Devon coven to locate new Slayers and travel to places the coven identified as supernatural hot spots. There were now Council buildings in New York, Buenos Ares, Hong Kong, Sydney, and Nairobi, each created to train the girls, sending them back to their homes with the skills to handle any local threats, while still being on call on the chance that they were needed for large-scale battles on the global level. It was a Reserve Army, made entirely of girls with superpowers.

Recently, he and Buffy had been heavily debating – well, more accurately arguing – about making their presence public knowledge, just as the vampires had. Buffy felt they needed the world to know that they were there to help, believing that with most vampires “mainstreaming,” as it was called, Slayers could be used to handle the occasional demonic threats and expand their role to other exploits, her pet idea being disaster relief.

Hurricane Katrina had added fuel to her case, and she insisted that Slayers should be there in times of need, like the Red Cross. If they went public, they would legitimize themselves as a non-government organization, forming connections with other nonprofits and becoming a worldwide leader in handling natural disasters. If they remained covert, world governments could identify them as rogue, if not outright terrorists. Better to declare themselves as forces for good rather than have others define them.

Now, the point was almost moot – if Eric Northman was right, a war between humans and vampires was coming, and the Slayers would be called upon to fight on the side of humanity. Northman’s unspoken fear was that mainstreaming vampires such as himself – though Eric would be the first to admit that he was far from the ideal example of a mainstreamer – would bear the brunt of the casualties as they found themselves embattled by both human armies and the Sanguinistas. The situation was dire, and as he gazed at the people who had been assembled in his room since shortly after Buffy woke from her Slayer dream, Rupert knew they were out of their league, never before having to dabble in such politics.

Politics were always Quentin Travers’s thing; something Giles loathed and Buffy didn’t understand. The old Council was a nexus of supernatural information, having to balance the thin line between overstepping and using the Slayer for the purpose she had been created for. That Buffy never cared for Travers was a fact, and even after four years he still struggled to impart on her the necessity of building relationships with other supernatural entities to protect both humanity and their Slayer army.

He watched Buffy as she paced back and forth in front of the television, arms crossed over her pajama shirt as she bit her lip in thought. The BBC was on, and a news presenter was discussing how the vampire situation in America was deteriorating. His Slayer – and she would always be his Slayer, even if she were one of many now – was going to need diplomacy in order to win the coming war, rather than her usual tactic of hit first and ask questions later.

Xander sat on the couch, resting his head against the back of the sofa as he slowly fell back to sleep, mouth wide open as he snored lightly. Willow, seated next to him, poked his rib, and he jumped and gave a sniffle as he returned to waking. Dawn was in a wingback chair, curled up with her legs under her while she worriedly watched her sister pace.

Kennedy had surely invited herself to the meeting when Willow had received the call, but Giles had grown to appreciate the assertive girl, even if she remained somewhat of a spoiled brat. She sat on the couch’s armrest next to her girlfriend and had been telling of her own Slayer dream when Eric had called.

Apparently, she only saw the vampire dissolve into a pool of blood before rising again, but it was enough to confirm that Buffy’s dream was real. Rupert then turned to the last person in the room – Andrew Wells, the formerly evil pest who seemed to somehow ingratiate himself into their lives to the point where his presence at important Scooby meetings was no longer questioned. This was his team, and as he looked among them, he only hoped they would see that it was imperative that they stop everything and immediately fly to Louisiana.

“So, G-man, what’s the sitch?” Xander had recovered from being awakened from his nap and asked the question everyone had on their minds.

“Well,” Rupert began, “I will tell you of my call, but first I need Buffy to tell me about this Slayer dream she had last night.”

Buffy shrugged. “Vampire named Bill goes off on vampire Bible stuff, blonde girl tries to talk him down, vampire named Bill swallows vile of blood, decomposes himself into this puddle of blood and yuck, then forms again as big, scary, naked monster covered in blood. Blonde girl and blond guy in the room run as vampire named Bill but obviously something more gives a growl like a hundred angry cats.”

He could tell this dream had particularly disturbed Buffy, as she continued to rub her arms as if cold, even in the well-heated London townhouse. She tried to blow it off as she does, but her Slayer sense knew something was inherently wrong about the scene she’d seen.

“Ah yes,” Giles began, pulling open an ancient book on his lap. “Before I can really analyze the dream in-depth, I’m afraid we need a little... history lesson to understand the context of what I believe is happening and how it relates to my previous phone call.” He listened as, almost as one, the children groaned at the prospect of a lecture, though Andrew made him wait while he grabbed a journal to take notes.

“Well,” he began, “the Watcher’s Council, the old council, used to have a department that primarily researched vampire anthropology, so to speak. You recall the Turok-Han we saw in Sunnydale that last year, the ancient vampires coming directly from the Hellmouth. They are what you’d consider a lesser-evolved form of vampire. Let’s call them Neanderthal Vampires.”

“Caveman vampires?” Xander asked, because of course Xander would ask this. “Flinstone vampires?”

Giles rubbed his head, knowing it would be difficult to dispense the sum total of vampire prehistory in a way that wouldn’t have the children nodding off in the middle of the lecture. “No, the Turok-Han wouldn’t be... Flinstone vampires, as it were, they are an even lesser form, less developed than modern vampires. Now, we know that about ten thousand years ago, modern human society began in pastoral lands between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers in the middle east. The Mesopotamians. They spoke an Indo-European language and had the first form of writing, and from their society comes the Judeo-Christian tradition—”

“Go Jews!” Willow interrupted with a fist pump. He should have expected her to latch onto that part of the conversation. Giles took a breath, during which the only sound in the room was Andrew scribbling on his notepad.

“Yes, well, these were homo-sapiens, just like you and me. Now, from that area of the world came the first vampires, the ones you’re more familiar with—those that were once human, but were turned into vampires. Just as Judaism has its own Genesis story, the vampires have their own origin myths, a mythology that, like the Bible, doesn’t accurately reflect the anthropological evolution of vampires.”

He was really warming to his subject. “These are the vampires who inhabited Sunnydale, the kinds you—” he paused, trying to find the most diplomatic way of speaking on the subject. “The kinds you knew. Angel, Spike, Darla, Drusilla, et cetera.”

If Buffy flinched at those names, Giles didn’t notice and continued.

“The Aurelians are a prime example of this kind of vampire. Now, the vampire Bible—and yes, Xander, there is a vampire Bible—”

“Does it have Noah’s Arc?” Xander interjected.

“Yes, but—”

“Jonah and the Whale?”

“Nineveh is mentioned, yes—”

“Jesus Christ Superstar?”

“No, Xander, it doesn’t have either an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical or a New Testament.”

“Jewish vampires!” Willow gave another fist pump.

Giles ignored them, continuing as he always had. “Vampires believe the first vampire was named Lilith—”

“Adam’s first wife!” Willow cut in.

“Yes, Lilith was the first vampire, and she begat all other vampires. The kinds you know, the kinds who were always attracted to the Hellmouth.”

At this Giles paused, trying to maneuver the conversation back to the topic on hand. “Anyway, if you recall, when vampires first came out to the public I explained that there were two breeds of vampire – those we saw in Sunnydale, and the ones now making their presence fact instead of fiction.

“I told you a little about how the two breeds came to be, and how the _Auctoritas_ , or Authority, was formed in the fifth century. A spell was cast, and vampires who aligned themselves with the Authority became the ones like Nan Flanagan and the others you now see on the news. They cast the spell in an act of self-determined evolution, and they are of a higher breed than those original vampires and no longer need show their demon faces.

“However, some vampire lines, like the Aurelians, chose not to take part in the Auctoritas, and remained less evolved.”

“Spike’s unevolved! I could have told you that!”

Buffy pointedly ignored Xander’s jab, but Giles didn’t read anything into it. “Nan Flanagan’s that bey-otch who is always throwing a fit about vampire rights, isn’t she?” Buffy’s description of the vampire was accurate; a few of Rupert’s colleagues who had encountered the vampire spoke of her such terms as “ball buster” and “heinous witch”.

“Yes, she is the spokesperson of the American Vampire League. We don’t see much of her here in England, but she is a major lobbyist in the United States. The AVL is the public face of the Authority, and it is they who handle all press related to the mainstreaming movement.” General exposition done, Rupert contemplated how to explain the situation in New Orleans

“Mr. Northman, a vampire Sheriff in Louisiana, is the gentleman I have just spoken to.”

“Sheriff? Does he have a tin star?” Xander laughed at his own interjection, quickly quieting when he saw no one else joined him.

“No, Xander… it's the old English use of 'sheriff,' originating from the words 'shire reeve...' oh, nevermind. Each state in America has its own vampire King or Queen, who is the sovereign reigning under the rule of the Authority. States are then divided into different Areas, and each Area has a Sheriff to oversee the day-to-day… or night-to-night tasks of governing the vampire populace.

“Mr. Northman is highly respected, and very old, as was his maker before him. He has just informed me of a situation in Louisiana that could lead to an all-out war between humans and vampires, one that could become World War III if it got out of hand.” He paused, letting his words sink in and hoping the children could understand how precarious world peace currently was.

“What’s going on?” Buffy asked. “What would cause a world war between vampires and humans? I thought with the whole Great Revelation, they were all with the kumbaya-grooving-togetherness vibe?”

Rupert smiled, knowing Buffy had keenly driven to the heart of the matter. “You’ve seen the news reports. The bombings of the Tru Blood factories have caused vampires worldwide to feed on humans again. A faction of vampires that call themselves Sanguinistas has overthrown the Authority.

“The Authority had always had some semblance of religiosity to it, upholding the Book of Lilith, the vampire Bible, but never taking a literal interpretation of it. One of their functions is to protect a relic – a vial that is believed to contain the blood of Lilith, gathered by her progeny upon her demise on the stake of the first Slayer. Mr. Northman has called because a vampire named Bill Compton has ingested the blood of Lilith and has resurrected himself as some sort of vampire god – Lilith reborn.”

“I still can’t get over the fact that the big, bad vampire’s name is Bill. He sounds like a weenie to me!” Once again, Xander’s interruption garnered no laughs, though Willow did seem to be holding back a giggle. And if Rupert had the time, to be honest with himself, he would admit that Bill was a rather unintimidating name for a vampire god.

“Yes, Xander. This Compton fellow is the man Buffy saw in her Slayer dream, dissolving into a pool of blood and then rising again. In spite of his weak name, this Bill could very well cause a national— or possibly international— catastrophe. Mr. Northman, who may have been the blond man in the dream, has requested that we come to Louisiana to aid him in trying to avert an all-out war. He requires the Slayer – Buffy – to ensure the safety of a Miss Sookie Stackhouse, a telepath, who Mr. Northman suspects may be the first target of Bill ... er, Lilith ... um ...”

“The Vampire Formerly Known as Bill?” Buffy tried.

“Bill-Lil?” Xander suggested

“Bilith? We could totally call him Bilith!” Dawn spoke up as Rupert searched for a term for the newly reborn entity. Unlike Xander’s quips, this garnered a laugh, as both Buffy and Willow snickered at the suggested name for their new adversary.

Buffy waved her arms, catching the attention of the group. Rupert met her eyes as she set out a battle plan. “So we go to Louisiana, keep Bilith from this Sookie, stop an international war between humans and vampires, then go hit Bourbon Street for a post-apocalypse party? Sounds easy to me.”

His Slayer’s confidence always astounded him, and Rupert could only hope that everything would that simple.

**_Day 1 – Part III: Orders_ **

**Los Angeles, California 6:13 am**

He would never get tired of that necro-tempered glass.

Angel leaned back in his leather desk chair, gazing out the wide windows as the sun rose over the city that bore his name. Sunrise was his mental detox time – he was always an early riser, in spite of being a vampire, and the mornings gave him a few hours to prep and plan before the workday at Wolfram & Hart really started. He inhaled an unnecessary breath, reaching a state of Zen as the cobalt sky gave way to the pinks, purples and blues of morning.

He had a lot on his plate these days, with the Tru Blood factories being bombed and vampires in a crisis. He had hoped that the Great Revelation would help his goal of changing Wolfram & Hart from the inside, but chaos had descended as vampires began attacking humans without a care for the consequences. He worried about his mission; the one Doyle had set him on, of helping the hopeless. He wished Cordelia were there, but the seer remained in a coma.

His reverie was interrupted as the heavy doors to his office were kicked open, banging against the wall. They were certain to leave a mark.

“Peaches! Guess who just beat his highest score on Crash Bandicoot?”

Angel tensed his shoulders at the sound of Spike’s shrill voice. Once again, he cursed his demented child for turning the obnoxious William the Bloody, and he cursed the stupid curse that brought him back from the dead. Drusilla was mad, as her selection of Spike clearly indicated. Some vampires just didn’t have any taste when it came to choosing whom to turn, and as sick and twisted as Angelus was, he had always had good taste.

Angel slowly turned in his chair, leaving the glorious sunrise to stare blankly at his progeny. Spike stood in the doorway, triumphant. Behind him Angel could see Illyria glancing into the office over Spike’s shoulders. Duster swirling around his ankles, Spike sauntered towards Angel’s desk, the god-king following behind like a faithful, deadly puppy.

“Spike, please don’t tell me you and Illyria have been up playing video games all night, because I’m really trying to make an effort in not caring about you.” Angel could feel a headache coming on, as always seemed to happen in Spike’s presence. He was even debating giving the damn Billy Idol wannabe Buffy’s number in England, just to get rid of him, but Angel decided he would take pity on the Slayer and keep Spike where he could watch him.

“Sounds like someone’s a little bitter because he never could beat the boss on level sixteen!”

Well, Damn. Angel’s lack of video game competency had become a running joke around the office, and Spike needled him about it endlessly. His hands were just too big to finesse the controllers, he asserted. It had nothing to do with lack of talent.

Spike’s stride was wide and confident as he crossed the room, and the god-king followed to stand next to her “pet.”

“Spike, what do you want?” When dealing with Drusilla’s get, Angel had learned to always get right to the point.

Spike shrugged his shoulders, his gaze erratically moving all around the room while his left foot continually tapped in hyperactivity. The guy was always buzzing with motion, never able to sit still for long. There were many times back in the day when Spike’s ADD had almost gotten them killed.

“Dunno. Just figured you’d want to know what’s important in your beloved grandchild’s life is all. And to be honest, felt the need to inform you that Blue here – she’s becoming a smash at Mario Kart!” Spike gestured proudly to the god-king Illyria, whose blank gaze was fixated on a fichus that sat in the corner of the office. “It’s something that should be celebrated.”

“The mushroom is exceptional at motorsports,” Illyria intoned, never looking away from the plant.

Angel had set Spike up with every game console on the market, hoping that it not only would heal his wrists and rehabilitate his reflexes after the mentally disturbed Slayer cut off his hands, but that it would occupy his time so Angel could actually get some work done. He’d sent Illyria to play with Spike as a way of monitoring the younger vampire’s behavior, but the plan had backfired after Spike took it upon himself to inform Wolfram & Hart’s CEO of every milestone reached in every game played.

The previous week the obnoxious blond had mastered Call of Duty, a feat that Spike had deemed important enough to interrupt an important negotiation meeting between two rival demon clans that Angel was mediating. Both clans had been affronted, and Angel had to spend hours smoothing ruffled feathers, literally in once case.

Angel closed his eyes and began counting to ten in his head. Spike continued to talk Mario Kart with Illyria, but he ignored them. As he was reaching the number seven, he heard his doors open again, and the quick click-clack of high heels coming towards him.

A high-pitched voice broke Angel from his countdown. “Bossy!” He looked up to see Harmony, clad in a bright pink Jackie Kennedy suit complete with pillbox hat, coming towards him while waving a red folder that clashed with her ensemble.

“Harmony, I’ve told you not to call me that. What are you doing here so early in the morning?”

Harmony stopped in front of Angel’s desk, flashing a now quiet Spike a smile that was probably supposed to be seductive. “Well, I was trying to be a good assistant! And besides, Justin Timberlake is gonna be on _The Today Show_ , and I was going to be awake anyway.”

Spike snorted at Harmony’s musical taste, and she took the time to glare at him before she continued.

“Anyway, a memo just came from the Seers, and they say it’s, like, _really_ urgent, so it’s a good thing I was here to give it to you!” She put the folder on the desk, and turned to Spike, demeanor changing as she flipped her hair in a flirtatious maneuver meant to get his attention. Spike, however, was more curious about the memo, and Harmony’s antics were only noted by Illyria.

“This one wishes to mate with my pet,” she said in her flat, monotone voice. “However I do not believe she realizes that vampires do not procreate through copulation.”

Both Spike and Angel looked up from the memo to watch as an affronted Harmony tried to counter Illyria’s claims.

“I just… wanted to see how my Blondie Bear was doing. His hands got cut off three weeks ago, and I’ve been worried!”

“Harm, I’m fine. Now go file something,” Spike said, pointing towards the door.

“But Blondie—“

“And Harm, how many times have I told you not to call me that. Go do… something secretarial. Go get me coffee.” Spike’s voice was slowly becoming harsh.

“I’m an _administrative assistant_ ,” Harmony claimed, pouting. “And you don’t drink coffee anyway.”

Angel, who had been scanning the memo, looked up at the two. “Spike, stop antagonizing Harmony. And Harmony, stop trying to get Spike’s attention. Do I need to put you two in time out?”

Spike rolled his eyes. “But Granddad—“

“Spike.” Angel’s single word ended the oncoming whine. His progeny went silent, then grabbed for the memo as Harmony left the office in a huff.

“Dire circumstances… blah, blah, blah…” Spike spoke out loud, scanning the document. “Emerging apocalyptic situation… unknown force of evil energy arising in Louisiana… where the fuck is Bon Temps anyway?”

Angel rubbed his forehead. Yep. That oncoming headache he had predicted had arrived. “I don’t know, but I’ve been getting reports of activity in New Orleans all week. And the news hasn’t been good for vampires – hate groups are rising up and killing vampires on YouTube. I haven’t gotten a chance to figure out what’s going on, but now they’re saying something big is going to happen in a small backwater town in Louisiana.”

“Spent some time in New Orleans in the twenties. Good city. Horrible what happened with the hurricane.” Spike continued as if he expected Angel to consult with him on the situation in Louisiana.

“Yeah, Katrina was a bitch. Wish the Seers had seen that one coming.” Angel sighed. “I’m going to call Wes, see if he can check it out. You go—play your little video games or something.” Angel tried to wave Spike towards the door, but Spike stayed when he looked at an attached Google Maps image of Louisiana, indicating where Bon Temps was.

“These were the coordinates the Seers got?” He asked. “Awful close to Shreveport. Know people there.” As he continued to peruse the file, Angel grabbed his telephone.

“Yeah, somewhere in the bayous,” he said as he dialed. “Harm, get Wes on the line for me,” he said into the phone.

“Okie-dokie Bossy!” Harm answered cheerfully.

“Harm—“ Angel began to chastise his assistant for calling him that annoying name again, but realized it would probably be no use. “Never mind. Just get Wes.”

Spike flipped through the papers while Angel waited for the phone in Wesley Wyndham-Price’s apartment to ring.

“Angel? What’s wrong? Do you realize how early it is?” Wes’s voice was groggy with sleep.

“We got a situation in Louisiana. What do you know about demonic activity in New Orleans or the northern part of the state?”

“Well, I know the Vampire Authority is supposed to have a location somewhere in New Orleans, but I thought it had been destroyed in the hurricane. And there’s a rather large were pack in Shreveport. Why?”

“I think I might send you out there to check it out.” Angel answered. Spike had stopped rifling through the pages of the memo and now leaned across the desk, listening in on the phone call. Once again, Angel made a motion towards the door indicating Spike leave, but the other vampire just willfully shook his head. Illyria had moved closer to the fichus that had caught her attention earlier, and was now examining its leaves closely.

An idea suddenly struck Angel. “Hey, Wes? You think you could bring Spike along with you?” It would get the younger vampire out of his hair for a while. Spike could work as an independent contractor, and any money paid him would be well spent if it got rid of the pain in the ass.

“Granddad!” Spike began to argue.

Angel put the phone aside and spoke to Drusilla’s child directly. “You said you have friends there. Maybe _they’ll_ want you around.” It was cruel, but Angel didn’t have the time or patience to be kind to Spike.

“I will not allow my pet to travel without me,” Illyria snapped her head around, her voice the icy tone of a king showing his displeasure. Angel rolled his eyes and sighed.

“And Wes? Can Illyria come too?”

“Fine, fine. When do you want us to leave?”

“This afternoon on the private jet. I’ll fly you into Shreveport, and you should get there after dark. Drive to this Bon Temps place, check it out for supernatural activity.” Angel turned to his computer and began banging out an email to have Wolfram & Hart’s jet prepared.

“Very well. I’ll have my things packed by noon. Do you think you and Charles can handle the Senior Partners while we’re gone?”

“We’ll be fine, Wes. Keep an eye on Spike, I don’t want him pissing anyone. Knowing him, he’ll pick a fight with the weres and take on the entire pack.” Angel glared at Spike, who merely shrugged his shoulders as if admitting his grandsire’s prediction was perfectly valid.

“I’ll see to it Spike doesn’t get into any trouble. Is there anything else?”

“Put everything on the company credit card. That doesn’t mean Spike is allowed to order the oldest cognac available at the hotel bar.” Spike snickered. Even though Angel warned Wes against it, he still planned on ordering a Macallan that cost an arm and a leg if the chance came up.

“Yes, yes. I’ll properly babysit Spike. I’ll call when we’ve arrived.”

“Thanks Wes.” Angel hung up the phone and turned towards Spike. “You’re going to Louisiana. You will not start bar fights. You will not get raging drunk. You will try to be helpful to Wes, and try not to be a pain in the ass. Understood?”

Spike nodded. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll be a good boy and all that rot. Blue?” he called to get Illyria’s attention. “Looks like we’re going on a trip!”

“This is what humans call a vacation, yes?” She looked up from the fichus.

“This is what humans call a business trip, but we got Granddad’s expense account, so we can live it up a little.”

“Spike!” Angel growled. “You will behave yourself!”

“Yeah, yeah. Come along, Blue. Gotta get packed. I’ll bring along a couple of classic Nintendo Game Boys for the plane ride. You’re going to love the original Super Mario Brothers!” Spike sauntered out, followed by Illyria.

Angel shook his head. Whatever was going down in Louisiana, he knew it would only get worse when his grandchild hit the state.


	3. When Worlds Collide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy contemplates the remnants of Spike's life, while Sookie uses Southern good manners to welcome the Slayer and her companions to Eric's house--a role she didn't expect to play.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I’m back, and I actually have my shit together! I have not only a beat sheet (bullet point outline) but an actual, honest-to-god outline for almost the whole shebang, as well as three banked chapters, so there should be some more regular posting! Yay! 
> 
> So, I come here in the notes of a _True Blood_ fanfic to discuss how bad _True Blood_ became after such good early seasons.
> 
> You know how you can tell a true fan?
> 
> They interrogate the shit out of their favorite shows, figure out what went wrong, and rewrite everything that the writers couldn’t or wouldn’t do to make it better. 
> 
> This is a lesson I learned from the Fandom Elders of _Arrow_ , all of whom stopped watching circa season 4, but are still writing millions of words of fanfic to this day.
> 
> I also realized that, in my mind, Sookie Stackhouse is categorized as a Laurel Lance.
> 
> What is a Laurel Lance, you ask?
> 
> The short version is a female character who drives you nuts because you’re supposed to like her, but she keeps on doing stupid shit that pisses you off. It’s a female character who lets her Strong Female Character-ness get in the way of self-preservation and common sense, whose Independence and Pride and need to not be a Damsel in Distress leads her to making stupid choices that don’t make any objective sense, other than trying to be a Strong Female Character.
> 
> Dinah Laurel Lance, played by Katie Cassidy, was supposed to be the female lead of _Arrow_ , the romantic lead, and the fucking Black Canary. However, she was saddled with a bullshit backstory by three men who decided it would be a good idea if their classic DC romance between the Green Arrow and the Black Canary started with a history where they dated for years while he was cheating on her with various women. He was lost on a deserted island after running away with Laurel’s (much cooler) sister, Sara. So yeah. He was cheating on her with her sister, and it’s supposed to be the beginning of a timeless romance.
> 
> No thanks, I'll pass.
> 
> Turns out there’s another _Arrow_ analogy in there: Eric could have been a Felicity Smoak.
> 
> What’s a Felicity Smoak?
> 
> The short version is any character who, according to the story and the majority of fans, should be the romantic lead, but because of contractual obligations has to be pushed to the side. In the case of _Arrow_ , Felicity Smoak showed up in episode 3, had no nasty backstory with the Green Arrow, Oliver Queen, and actress Emily Bett Rickards had off-the-charts chemistry with actor Stephen Amell, something so lacking between Amell and Cassidy that reviews of the pilot suggested there was better chemistry between Amell and the actress playing his sister, Willa Holland.
> 
> Luckily for _Arrow_ , the Idiots in Charge recognized that their planned romance was a hot mess, hired one-off actress Rickards to be part of the show, and Felicity and Oliver lived happily ever after .
> 
> Alan Ball doesn’t have the common sense of Marc Guggenheim, and saying that hurts me, in my soul, because in most cases Marc Guggenheim is my personal nemesis for other choices made with _Arrow_.
> 
> So many problems in _True Blood_ could have been solved if, like Felicity Smoak, Eric replaced the dud romantic lead, in spite of the fact that contractual obligation means Bill has to be the lead character, based on Stephen Moyer’s billing. 
> 
> So, that’s our Notes-related digression for the day.
> 
> Actual Chapter Notes:
> 
> I originally planned on having chapters be roughly 4-6 thousand words--a good read, but not too much to handle in one sitting. However, that didn't happen, and chapters are now becoming 7-8 thousand words each. 
> 
> Also, [this](https://www.zillow.com/myzillow/SavedHomes#27886710%22) is how I imagined Eric's house. It's in Houston, and there are a few more rooms and many more acres to the property, but it's in the modern minimalist style I can see him appreciating.

**_The Zippo_ **

**Somewhere Over the Atlantic**

Buffy’d had the lighter in her hand since she'd picked it up after putting it through the scanner at the airport’s security checkpoint. Packing it had become second nature, a habit that arose from a need to be close to Spike those first few days after the Hellmouth closed. The ragtag bunch of newly chosen Slayers and their allies drove from the crater that had once been Sunnydale to Los Angeles and a nearby hospital, arriving at Angel’s hotel late in the afternoon the day Spike met the true death.

When they arrived, she hadn’t felt up to talking with Angel, discussing their kiss and discussing Spike’s sacrifice, but he _hovered_ , never asking what happened to Spike, but hovering all the same. She hated his hovering; it made her feel like the naïve sixteen-year-old she had been, who was so enamored with her mysterious, older boyfriend that she put up with his brooding, tortured soul bullshit. She locked herself in the room assigned to her and Dawn to avoid him and opened what would become a treasure trove to someone in mourning.

Each of the girls, along with the Scoobies and all other attached warriors fighting the final battle in Sunnydale, had packed a bag of clothes, keepsakes, and necessities, almost as if they were expecting Sunnydale to disappear in a sinkhole along the Pacific Coast Highway. It was Willow’s idea, and it came from the fear that they would lose the battle and have to flee. Buffy had protested such a pessimistic action, but later was thankful beyond measure that she had been able to pack a few clothes, some of her mother’s jewelry, Mr. Gordo, and family albums as if escaping a natural disaster.

She was also grateful that Spike had packed a beat-up black duffel.

Locked away in her room that first night, Buffy had reverently opened the duffel, finally letting her tears for her lost love pour from tired eyes. And it was love. That wasn’t just her guilt talking. That wasn’t some messed up feelings of being in debt to Spike. She was a grown-ass woman and could at least admit she _had_ loved Spike, possibly was even _in love_ with him, at least to herself and only when it was too late.

What she found in the duffel was a balm to the sting of his not believing she really loved him: bits and pieces of William the Bloody, all available for her perusal.

Spike had packed a few black t-shirts and black jeans, his usual uniform, along with one of the red dress shirts that had always been his only concession to color. Buffy slept in that red dress shirt that night, and it had still smelled of whiskey and cigarettes and Spike. She found a worn, dog-eared copy of Keats’ poetry, copyright 1873, with a dedication to beloved William from his mother on his twentieth birthday scrawled in the cover in elegant writing.

There were journals: leather-bound notebooks filled with scratched out verse and ink-stained prose, retelling Spike’s life through vignettes of moments he felt necessary to record. She put those aside, planning on spending a long afternoon in England reading them all, but that afternoon never came. It would make everything too real, too raw to read Spike’s most intimate thoughts, and a part of her felt she didn’t deserve to see that side of him.

A lockbox, a foot square, and five inches deep had been the heaviest object in the duffel, but the lock was no match for a Slayer in mourning. Inside she found pictures of every sort: black and white photographs of the Order of Aurelius before Angel got his soul, snapshots of Spike and Dru, done in a photo booth dated 1948 with Coney Island written on the back, a set of professional portraits of Spike, Dru, an unknown tall blond man, a blond woman, and a boy who looked like a teenager in outfits right out of _The Great Gatsby_ , marked with the date May 21, 1928.

Buffy was curious about the three figures in the portraits, people she had never seen before, and she swallowed a sob at the thought that Spike would never be able to tell her who they were. There were picture postcards from all over the world dated from 1934 through 1997. Spike never sent them to anyone, and their blank backs indicated they were kept for the significance of their picture rather than as missives from afar.

A few of the photographs caught Buffy off guard for their historical significance: Spike at Woodstock with a giant, curly afro and love beads, Dru with John F. Kennedy at some party. There were pictures of Spike and Dru with various celebrities – Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and Kurt Cobain.

The lockbox also contained pictures of her: family photographs Spike had likely snatched during his stalker phase when he’d rummage through her things like some kind of pervert. But the pictures weren’t sexual in any way; in fact, they were mostly group shots of herself with Dawn or her mother. There was a school photo – Buffy’s senior portrait, and several candid shots, most of which had her out in the sunlight.

There were pieces of jewelry in the lockbox; ornate rings, and women’s necklaces and earrings with dangling stones that were so beautiful they had to be real: emeralds and diamonds and rubies and sapphires, gorgeous even in their tarnished, dated settings. Each piece was different and must have held significance for Spike to keep them for so long.

The last item she pulled out of the duffel had been at the bottom: small and heavy, Spike’s zippo lighter had been covered by the clothes and journals, seemingly insignificant but like a lifeline to her. She recalled a time when she was preparing for a visit from Dawn’s social worker and had stuffed the lighter, which had been left on the coffee table for some reason, in her pocket. Spike had pulled the lighter out of her jeans himself, an overtly sexual act that had been filled with anger and passion, all wrapped up in a small gesture.

She sat for hours that night, reading Keats's poems while constantly flicking the lighter on and off. When Dawn called her for dinner, she stuck the lighter in her back pocket, which quickly became a habit. She would carry the lighter everywhere with her, pulling it out and igniting it whenever her melancholy settled over her and she began to miss Spike. Dawn was the first to catch onto the action, seeing the lighter as they packed their bags and traveled to London to set up the Slayers Council. Dawn hadn’t questioned Buffy’s keeping it, only quietly mumbling that she missed him, too.

Their third night in London Buffy’s sadness at Spike’s demise hit a crescendo, and all the feelings she’d been denying, as well as all her grief at losing her home, poured out. She and Dawn had started a habit of sharing a room, likely a response to the trauma of the Hellmouth’s closing, and that night became worried as Buffy ugly-cried.

In order to show her sister she wasn’t falling back into the depression that she’d been in after being brought back from the dead, Buffy had shared the contents of the lockbox with her, the two of them laughing at Spike’s hair changes through the decades and recalling stories of their favorite times with the vampire.

It was a healing night, and Buffy turned a corner as she shared memories of Spike with Dawn. She told Dawn she had loved him, but he hadn’t believed her, to which Dawn ranted for a few minutes about making out with nosy ex-boyfriends who came bearing gifts that could rival the Greeks and their Trojan Horse. Dawn had never liked Angel, and she had settled into blaming him for Spike’s death. He had brought the amulet that killed Spike, after all, and he had always been an arrogant butthead, in her opinion. Buffy admitted to her bad kissing decisions, and Dawn let her off the hook.

There was some guilt in Dawn, guilt that she had rejected him when he returned with a soul. If they could forgive Angel for what he’d done without a soul, couldn’t she have forgiven Spike? He had been the most significant person in Dawn’s life after Buffy died, and she had a feeling of loss that stemmed from abandoning him that last year.

The tragic romance of Spike and Buffy became imprinted in Dawn’s brain, and as she began to date as she grew older, she was always comparing the men she saw with Spike. Jeffrey didn’t love her like Spike had loved Buffy, so he had to go, as did David, Mark, and Stefan. Buffy had also tried dating but never got into any serious relationships that lasted more than two months. For the past year, Buffy had been single, comforting herself on her dateless Friday nights by playing with an old zippo and reading Keats’ poetry.

As Buffy sat on the plane going to Louisiana, she stared at the lighter. There had been something unspoken in Giles’ explanation of this Eric Northman guy, and Buffy thought heavily on the mystery of this vampire and Sookie Stackhouse. Giles had told her that Bilith was in love with the woman, but no one had mentioned Eric’s relationship with the endangered telepath.

There was something oddly familiar about the situation, but Buffy couldn’t put her finger on it. Instead, she held the lighter and focused on Sookie and Eric. She figured there were deep feelings between the two but decided to let that mystery unravel itself. Closing her eyes, she stuffed the lighter in her pocket and tried to sleep for the rest of the transatlantic flight.

**_Lady of the Manor_ **

**Shreveport, Louisiana**

They left Eric’s safe house with just enough time to reach Shreveport before dawn.

The drive was remarkably quiet, but the silence had been loaded. There were questions that needed to be answered, but no one was willing to speak of all the variables that were coming into play. Sookie supposed that Eric’s family line had trusted him with whatever their next step was, but she was surprised that Jason didn’t cause a fuss about continuing the journey home with an SUV full of vampires. Something had been happening to Jason; she couldn’t get a read on his mind, and at some point, he fell asleep. Jessica spent the entire drive crying quietly, and Sookie was glad none of the other vampires made an issue out of her show of emotions.

At about five in the morning, the SUV turned down a quiet residential street where the houses were spaced further and further apart. These weren’t mere houses; they were sprawling estates, each with their own gated driveway. Eric turned down one of these private lanes, driving up to a gate where he keyed in a code. The large gate opened, and Eric drove down a tree-lined drive, eventually turning onto a paved motor court, leading up to a house.

The house was a modern marvel of steel, glass, and stucco; minimalist in its contemporary design, but clearly high end. And Sookie was shocked to see it wasn’t exactly a house; mansion seemed too pedestrian a word to describe the building. Hard angles were softened by landscaping works of art, all lit up and glittering. The house itself was already lit, and she could see through the large glass windows lining a double door that the main foyer held a giant, modernist chandelier.

“Everybody out,” Eric announced as he turned off the car. One by one the car was emptied of human and vampire alike, and all tiredly followed Eric to the front door. He used a touch-screen similar to the one at his safe house to open the door, and upon entering Sookie could barely keep her mouth shut at the beauty of the house. She wasn’t alone; Jessica’s eyes were wide, and Jason couldn’t seem to speak.

Molly was examining the keypad with fingerprint recognition software, then wandered over to what looked like a computer screen control panel. “Nice security specs. Can you access all the cameras?”

“Yes, and it sends alerts if there’s any unauthorized movement on the property. I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time to play with it tomorrow night.”

“Still with Scandinavian minimalism, I see,” Nora told her brother, almost teasingly, and it was a true way to describe the building’s interior: clean lines, open plan, high ceilings, hardwood floors, a sweeping staircase, all accented by tasteful modern art. There was nothing fussy about the house; it was almost a showplace that looked barely inhabited by humans, and Sookie figured that was likely true: what would vampires have that could clutter their houses?

“Why the hell would you have a house this big for yourself?” Tara asked. It was clear she was just as stunned by the house’s minimalist grandeur as Sookie herself, but better able to hide it.

“When Bill ascended the throne, I already knew he would be a weak king. I figured that an occasion might arise where I needed to stage a coup to protect me and mine and that it would be a good idea to have a headquarters ready if I needed to seize the throne.” Eric’s answer was succinct, but Sookie was shocked by its implications. Eric was ready to take the throne if need be? He met her eyes for a moment, and she suddenly realized he was ready to stage a coup if it was needed _for her_ , to protect _her_. She immediately looked away.

“Wish you’d overthrown that motherfucker before all this shit happened,” Tara commented, and Sookie couldn’t decide if she agreed.

Eric didn’t dwell on it; instead, he led the way to the large, stainless steel kitchen. “There are eight rooms above ground, three in a light-tight basement, and I’ll be in the light-tight master. Pam, your closet takes up the bonus room, and I remodeled the basketball court to house Godric’s library. Someone will be bringing groceries tomorrow to feed the humans, and plenty of blood for the vampires, as well as changes of clothes for everyone. For now, we should all just get some rest. The Slayer’s people should be arriving tomorrow afternoon.”

He was just giving out impartial instructions and Sookie didn’t know if she felt ignored being grouped with everybody else. Before the group broke up as everyone searched for their own rooms, Jason raised his hand. The vampires looked at him as if he’d lost his mind, but it was becoming the way they always looked at him.

“Yes, Stackhouse?”

“Can I go to the pool tomorrow?”

Eric stared him down. Sookie put a hand to her forehead, recognizing that her boneheaded brother was back.

“Of course, Stackhouse.”

With that he turned around and headed towards the stairs, leaving everyone else behind. They stood for a minute, as if unsure of what exactly to do next, without his guidance. It was Pam who broke first.

“C’mon, Tara,” she called. “I can see the Viking Chieftan has no more need of us tonight. My room’s down here.” Without another word she headed down another set of stairs, leading to the basement level.

Tara began to follow before turning back to Sookie. “G'night, Sook!” she said with a wave, as if nervous to follow her maker.

Nora watched them leave, though she seemed annoyed by something. “Fuck this shit,” she said, efficiently. “Molly and Jessica, you can come with me.” She headed down the stairs herself, not even watching if she’d be followed.

This left Sookie in the kitchen with Jason. It was as if she finally had her first moment to breathe after the long night. She thought she had decompressed at the safe house, but even that felt overwhelming and overcomplicated. So much had happened, and she was almost too tired to process it, but everything was still running through her mind. She walked over to the breakfast table, past a kitchen she normally would have gawked at, and heaved herself into a chair.

“Are we really okay with this?” Jason asked. “Staying with vampers?”

Sookie rolled her eyes. “Vampires, Jason. And it looks like it’s our safest bet.”

“You sure Vampire Bill’s comin’ after you?”

“I don’t think we can call him Bill anymore,” Sookie replied, dejectedly. “I don’t know what he’s gonna do, but I do think we’re gonna need to stick together.”

“Yeah, I’m okay with Jess and all, and Tara, but some of these vampires, they give me the creeps!”

“Jason, don’t be prejudiced. Not now. And you sure sounded excited to use those creepy vampires’ pool!”

“Well, yeah, because I’d use the pool during the day when it was safe.”

“You understand what’s happening, right? Those vampires are now on our team.”

“Team what?”

“Team Keep Sookie Alive. You didn’t see Bill, Jason. He said some of the... most hateful things I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard some bad shit before. But Bill, he just... it left me raw...”

“Oh Sook—”

She didn’t realize it, but she was crying. “I mean, did I ever really know who he was? Did he ever really love me? To be so... cold to me, it was like nothing I ever experienced before.” Jason came up to her, bent over, and gave her a hug, arms wrapping around her. “And I don’t know what he’s gonna do next... all I know is he’s fucked some shit up—blowin’ up the True Blood factories, and now he’s some vampire god...”

“Sookie, you can just call bullshit on everything mean Bill told you. He’s fuckin’ crazy, how the fuck does he know what you’re like? He’s just an angry, naked god with a small mind. C’mon. I’m sure a house this big has gotta have a big bathtub somewhere. Maybe that will make you feel better.”

Jason pulled Sookie up and led her by the hand up the stairs. The two of them walked through family rooms and bonus rooms and billiard rooms before entering a hallway, where they began opening and closing doors at random. They came upon a room done in cream and gray, with dark wood floors, clean linens, and peach accents. It was a beautiful room, fancier than anywhere Sookie had ever seen, but she was too dejected to admire it.

“Here, Sook—” Jason led her into a bathroom with a separate tub and shower. “Take a bath, then go to bed. I promise you’ll feel better in the morning.” She leaned against him and he held her for a minute, while Sookie let herself cry. “You gonna be okay?”

Sookie nodded and wiped her eyes. Her crying jag had left her short of breath and hiccupping, so she just nodded.

“Okay, Sook. I’ll see you in the morning.” He kissed her on the forehead and left in search of his own bedroom.

It took a moment for Sookie to convince herself to move from where she was, but eventually she headed towards the bathroom, her movements automatic as she began to fill the tub. Of course it was enormous and of course there were fancy bubbles and bath salts nearby for any houseguests to enjoy. This entire building was incongruent with the Eric she knew, and maybe that was why she was so unsettled: this wasn’t anything she’d expected. She didn’t expect Bill to be a villain, she didn’t expect Eric to be the hero. Their roles in her life had been defined from the moment she met them, and somehow she found herself trying to catch up on a story that was happening without her.

Trying to calm her mind, Sookie stepped into the bath without even really thinking about what she was doing. The water was scalding hot, leaving her body reddened, but she didn’t seem to notice. She could barely keep her eyes open, and when she almost fell asleep in the slowly cooling water she decided it was finally time to call it a night. She unplugged the tub.

She didn’t have any sleepwear available, so she wore Eric’s shirt to bed. It was all she had, and she didn’t want to read anything into it.

Climbing into the gorgeous cream and peach bed, she finally allowed herself to close her eyes and went to sleep.

When she awoke around noon, it was to the sound of singing somewhere else in the house. The voice was deep, resonant, and quite talented, but entirely unfamiliar. Who was in Eric’s house; Eric’s resting place? Rubbing the sleep from her eyes Sookie went to investigate, even if she felt awkward walking through the house in Eric’s clothes.

Down the stairs and through two wide parlors with decoratively set seating areas, Sookie entered the kitchen to find an [older black woman](https://images.app.goo.gl/XzNFMaqFPbPyNfFy9) putting away groceries.

“Hello?” Sookie asked.

The woman turned to her with a big smile. “You must be Sookie. I’m Lavinia, I handle day-to-day stuff for Mr. Eric and Miss Pam.” Sookie was still taken aback that a strange human had access to Eric’s most secret house, but a scan of Lavinia’s mind showed she was exactly who she said she was: a friendly assistant devoted to Pam and Eric who was ready to be helpful, even without any signs of glamour.

“Yes, I’m Sookie,” she answered.

“I’m sure you are. I know Mr. Eric’s expecting more guests later today, so I went to Costco and bought everything in bulk. There should be plenty of food for the humans to choose from.”

“Can I help?”

Inside her mind, Lavinia was thinking what a sweet girl she was. She was absolutely tickled that Sookie offered to help. “Thanks, sweetheart, but don’t you worry about it. I’m almost done!” She quickly finished her task before collecting the grocery bags she’d used and placing them below the sink. “Now, how about you come with me?”

There was something about Lavinia, something soothing and comforting that seemed innate about the woman. While Sookie had never been to preschool she did recall being a child watching _Sesame Street_ , and the adults on the show always had the same gentleness Lavinia was showing now.

Sookie followed Lavinia, somewhat mystified by the woman’s kindness—something else inherently incongruent with anything she associated with Eric Northman. This woman seemed to know him intimately as a trusted employee, but the Eric Northman she knew would surely keep everyone at arm’s length, never letting anyone this close.

“Now, the message Mr. Eric left for me said y’all were all without any clothes, so I was supposed to see to all your needs.” Sookie continued to follow Lavinia into the formal dining room, where two round tables with eight chairs each divided the room. Both were covered with department store bags. “Now let me see...”

Lavinia began to look through a few bags as if trying to find something. “I set everything for you aside... here we are. This is everything Mr. Eric told me to get for Sookie.” Lavinia drew Sookie over to where two large bags were filled with clothes—expensive clothes at that. Before Sookie even pulled the first item out she cursed high-handed vampires who seemed to throw money around everywhere. Inside the bags were some dresses, sweaters, jeans, shorts, shirts, as well as underthings, all in her style and all the perfect size. They were things she would have picked for herself, except she’d have shopped at Walmart instead of Bloomingdales.

“Now, where did I...” Lavinia said to herself before walking towards what looked like a wall of shoeboxes before pulling out three in particular and handing them to Sookie. “These are for you! I got some things for everybody, except for Mr. Eric and Miss Pam. Eric always keeps some clothes in all of his houses, and this one already has one of Miss Pam’s wardrobes!”

Sookie recalled Eric’s comment about turning a room into a closet and frowned as this new, unexamined facet of Pam stared her in the face. This woman, this hard, cold vampire, was a clothes horse. According to Lavinia’s mind, her fashionista tendencies were just one more of her endearing traits. It confused Sookie; was there anything actually endearing about Pam?

“Now, when’s that brother of yours gonna be up?” Lavinia asked, pulling aside two other bags, these from a selective menswear store.

“I can, um, check on him?” Sookie offered, still befuddled by the woman’s cheery demeanor and obvious affection for Eric and Pam. It was showing a side of the vampires Sookie was too unsettled to see, so her offer to look for Jason was more out of self-preservation, a need to escape and collect herself, than to help Lavinia out.

“You go do that, sweetheart, and I’ll get everything ready for when the vampires rise.”

Before Sookie left the room, she turned back to Lavinia.

“You know Eric and Pam are vampires? And you’re okay working for them?” Sookie was unsure how the woman would take her question.

“Of course! My momma worked for Pam and Eric long before the Great Revelation, and they’ve always been good to us! Now, I have told Eric I don’t approve of that bar of his, but he’s convinced feeding humans those vampire clichés would be a big money-maker, and he wasn't wrong.” From her tone, it was obvious Lavinia had chastised Eric in the past about this subject. “But if they want to be hoodwinked by thinking Anne Rice was right, who am I to stop ‘em?” In Lavinia’s mind she was scolding Eric like a child while he laughed it off.

Sookie could only smile at the woman—a Crazy Sookie smile—before escaping up the stairs.

“Jason?” She called out, heading into the hallway.

“Here, Sook!” He came out of the room he’d chosen as his own—through the doorway she could see it was done in shades of gray and charcoal—wearing those black tactical pants he’d worn the night before and nothing else, feet bare, hair still wet, a towel casually draped around his neck.

“This place is somethin’ else! They got three showerheads in the shower!” His little boy enthusiasm made her smile.

“I’m sure we could go exploring later, but for now you might want to put on a shirt. Eric’s got someone downstairs who brought us all clothes.”

“New stuff?” Ignoring her recommendation for a shirt Jason barreled down the stairs as is, and Sookie heard Lavinia laugh merrily at his appearance. Sookie followed her brother back down to the dining room, where Lavinia was fawning over him.

“Well aren’t you a good lookin’ boy!” She said. “I’m Lavinia, honey. Now, the clothes I got for you may be what you’d consider Sunday Best, but there’s a couple of pairs of jeans in there and a few T-shirts.” She handed him two bags before turning to the wall of shoes and pulling out boxes for some nice loafers and a pair of Converse sneakers.

“Thanks, ma’am!” Jason said, remembering the manners Gran taught him. “Didja get me a pair of swimmin’ trunks?”

“Sure did! Now, why don’t you go change while I make some brunch for you and your sister?” Jason didn’t need any prompting, taking his treasures with him back up the stairs. Sookie, however, shuffled her feet for a moment.

“You don’t need to cook for us, ma’am,” she said, uncertainly.

“Of course I do! All my kids are in college right now, and I haven’t done a big breakfast in months! Now, go up and change, sweetie! I’m gonna go set some wards, then make some chicken and waffles!” Sookie was still unsure of how to take Lavinia.

“Wards?”

“Simple ‘do no harm’ wards. Keeps anyone with ill intentions out. Eric does them at all his houses, but they need to be renewed every few months to keep them strong.”

“So you’re a witch?” Sookie recalled her history with witches, immediately on edge.

“Well, my momma liked to say we descended from Marie Laveau, but that’s just an old family yarn.” Lavinia looked at Sookie’s worried face. “You must be worried about Marnie. We may not be voodoo priestesses, but I can tell you that woman had bad juju. It was a terrible time for Eric to send me and my husband to Barbados, but it was our twenty-fifth anniversary, and he wanted us to celebrate.”

More information about Eric, this person she apparently didn’t know at all.

“Well, thank you, ma’am for the clothes. I’m gonna go change now.”

“Sure thing, sweetie! And you can call me Lavinia!”

Sookie grabbed the designated bags with her clothes and escaped up the stairs to change.

After she returned, the day continued as it had those first moments: Lavinia throwing little asides in during conversation, indicating an intimate, amicable relationship with Eric and Pam that Sookie had never seen any sign of. These were the private vampires, vampires at home: there was a softness to the clear friendship with Lavinia and her family that would obviously be detrimental to the reputations of the Sheriff and his second if it was ever made public.

Pam had encouraged Lavinia’s daughter to go to design school, her son wanted to study abroad in Sweden. They were children of a witch who grew up knowing about the supernatural, incorporating it into their daily lives so nothing was unusual about working for a vampire sheriff.

After a big breakfast peppered with Lavinia’s chatter, Sookie decided to just accept her circumstances. This was strange—everything was strange. Her world was off-kilter, her life may be in danger, but sitting here in this beautiful house felt more like a vacation from reality.

“Now, there are some appetizers for you to bring out when Mr. Eric’s other guests arrive. They’ll probably be jet-lagged, and I’m sure they’ll be hungry. Just set ‘em out on the bar, and everyone can help themselves. I did a run to the blood bank, so the vampires should be fine, but Mr. Eric does have a large store of TruBlood at one of his other houses that I can bring if it’s needed. My number’s on the refrigerator, and I’ll be back later tonight with some gumbo. Call if you need me, sweetie!”

Like a whirlwind, Lavinia was out the door and gone. Just to check, Sookie walked over to the giant refrigerator. Sure enough, there were cheese platters and vegetable platters covered in saran wrap, sitting right beside bags of blood. As if nothing were out of the ordinary.

Well, Sookie decided, her vacation from reality begins now. She threw on the bathing suit among the clothes Lavinia brought—a white bikini, with red flowers—and spent the afternoon in the sun, watching Jason frolic in the pool like a little boy, asking her to watch him do hand-stands and swim laps.

It was around three o’clock when Sookie heard a van pulling up out front. She suddenly felt nervous, unsure of what to expect. She threw a jean skirt and tank top over her bikini and walked to the kitchen, pulling out the appetizer platters and placing them on the marble island countertop. She could hear van doors opening and voices chattering. Finally, taking a deep breath, she went to the wall of glass that made up the front façade and went out to meet the Slayer.

First out of a large, luxury travel van was a tall older man with metal-rimmed glasses and thinning dark hair. Before stepping out of the van he scanned the area, and must have been content with what he saw. A brief glance into his mind told Sookie this was Rupert Giles, Eric’s friend, and he was particularly interested in getting his hands on Godric’s library.

He was followed out by a man in his mid-twenties with shaggy dark hair. His flannel shirt and corduroy pants screamed Average Joe, but the most striking part of his appearance was the eye-patch—an actual eye-patch—over his right eye.

 _This is one sweet pad_! The man’s mind said. Sookie couldn’t discern who he was, but at least he was impressed with Eric’s house.

After came a redhead in a green wrap dress who Sookie immediately labeled as bouncy. She bounced down the stairs, bounced over to the two men, hair bouncing behind her. Even her mind was bouncy, tripping from one topic to the next.

_This is exciting! I’ve never been to Louisiana before! I mean I’ve been in apocalyptic situations, but never apocalyptic situations in Louisiana! That girl must be Sookie! She’s kind of hot, but I’m not noticing because I’m in a committed relationship right now. I wonder how old the vampires are gonna be? Giles said older than Spike, older than Angel, even older than The Master!_

Sookie immediately put her shields up, because the girl was a loud broadcaster and she couldn’t keep up with the speed of her thoughts.

Another woman followed her, this time a dark-eyed brunette with caramel skin, wearing dress shorts and a teal bolero jacket. Her thoughts were consumed with the redhead, repeating _I am Willow’s and I deserve to be here_ , _I am worthy of being Slayer management_ , as if it were a mantra. Once out of the van she went to the redhead’s side and grabbed her hand. So they were a couple; Sookie didn’t need to be a telepath to see that.

A short young man with dirty blond hair seemed to stumble down the van’s stairs but caught himself before falling. He had the look of a little boy dressed in his dad’s clothes: tweed jacket and slacks that looked too large and out of place on his thin frame. He did, however, have one of the nicer minds Sookie had ever encountered, every thought benignly innocent.

 _If I do well here, Mr. Giles will surely give me my own Slayer squad to manage!_ He thought. _I could totally be a Slayer Nick Fury, even if Xander is probably the Nick Fury because of the eyepatch and everything._

The young man was followed by another brunette with long hair, a tall, coltish body and striking blue eyes. Ripped jeans were paired with an Oxford University T-shirt and jean jacket, and her mind was mostly just curious—curious about Sookie.

_So she’s the telepath, right? I wonder what it’s like to be a telepath. Does she know the lengths Giles’s vampire friend is going to in order to protect her?_

Sookie immediately escaped her mind, not wanting to answer her questions.

Nothing Sookie had seen in anyone’s mind indicated they were the Slayer. The dark-eyed brunette apparently was seen as _a_ Slayer, of some sort, but she was clearly not _the_ Slayer.

Finally, a tiny blonde stepped out of the van, hopping down the steps in a graceful movement. Like the older man she scanned the surrounding area, but it was as if she had a higher level of knowledge, a sixth sense that was looking for any potential threat. Finally, her eyes landed on Sookie, standing on the steps in front of the doorway.

“So... you’re Sookie Stackhouse?” she asked, and in her mind, she was sizing Sookie up, wondering how skilled she was with her telepathy, and why it was so all-important that she be protected from a vampire god.

Sookie nodded, coming down the steps.

“Buffy Summers,” she introduced herself, shaking Sookie’s hands.

“Pleased to meet you.”

Introductions were put on hold for the moment because Jason Stackhouse, still in his swim trunks and dripping wet, barreled through the door to see who was at the house.

“The Slayer here, Sook?” he asked before striking a pose on the top of the steps, nodding acknowledgment to the unknown women in the group.

Sookie rolled her eyes then looked at Buffy. “One minute, please,” she said politely, with her Merlotte’s smile firmly in place. She marched back up the steps and got in Jason’s face.

“Jason Stackhouse did you drip water throughout this house? You know better than that!” she hissed at her brother.

“What? I heard people were here and I wanted to come meet ‘em!”

“Couldn’t you have taken the time to grab a towel?”

“Well, yeah, but I didn’t think about it.”

Sookie took a deep breath through her nose and closed her eyes. She could tell, from the thoughts projected at her, that her guests were enjoying the show.

 _And when had they become_ her _guests?_ There was, apparently, no way of escaping good Southern manners.

Chastising over, Jason, still wet, bounded down the stairs, holding his hand out to Buffy.

“Jason Stackhouse, ma’am!” He said, not noticing that Buffy wiped her hand on her jeans after shaking his.

“I’m Buffy,” she said with a wry smile. “So I guess we’re doing introductions. Well, at least we don’t have to tell each other what we did over summer vacation.” She turned to the older man

“The elder statesmen of the group, Rupert Giles, Watcher extraordinaire.” Sookie nodded at him, uncertain of what exactly it was that he watched.

She continued. “Xander Harris, pirate enthusiast,” the man with the eyepatch waved.

“Arrgh!” He said, with a piratey flourish. Jason nodded at him. Apparently he’d met a fellow goofball.

“Willow Rosenberg, wickedest witch in the western hemisphere...”

The redhead waved. “There are some _really good_ wards already going on with this house. It’s going to be so fun to learn them!”

Sookie made a mental note to introduce Willow to Lavinia.

“Her girlfriend, associate Slayer Kennedy Cortez...” Buffy continued. The brunette woman nodded, not letting go of Willow’s hand, though she bristled at being called an "associate Slayer." Sookie surmised there were some insecurities in her thoughts.

“Andrew Wells, Watcher-in-training...”

The young blond man, Andrew, came up to Sookie.

“So you’re a telepath? Like Jean Gray?”

Sookie looked for cues from Buffy, but only got a raised eyebrow.

“I guess?”

“Quick, what am I thinking?” Andrew closed his eyes as if he were thinking _really hard_ , and Sookie let down her shields to scan his mind.

“Your mind is like a comic book shop,” she laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen the _X-Men_ movies, but I don’t believe I’ll ever do anything that would make me be someone like that Dark Phoenix.”

Andrew stared at her, wide-eyed. “You’re real! A real telepath!”

Sookie nodded, but Andrew continued to stare with adoration.

“Looks like we have a Geek Whisperer here,” Xander laughed.

Buffy rolled her eyes, continuing. “My kid sister, Dawn Summers...”

The tall brunette gave her own wave, and Sookie looked at her beside Buffy. They didn’t obviously look like sisters, being so dissimilar--one short and blonde, the other tall and brunette--but there was something about their faces that tied them together, in the wry smiles they were both giving.

“And I’m Buffy Summers. The Slayer.”

Sookie looked at the newcomers and looked at her brother.

“Um... Jason, how about you help everyone with their bags?”

“Sure thing, Sook!” He gave Dawn a wink before helping the van driver in pulling the luggage from the van’s back.

Buffy watched him, calling his attention when he pulled out a large case that may have held a musical instrument. Maybe a guitar? But it wasn’t guitar-shaped?

“I’ll take that,” she said, grabbing the case. “My baby’s in there.” She didn’t elaborate.

There were other large cases in strange shapes that seemed to hold mysterious objects, along with various pieces of luggage, both carry-on and checked, as well as a large, heavy trunk that Xander helped Jason pull out.

“I’m sure it was very expensive to get all that stuff on a plane,” Sookie said, conversationally. Having only been on a plane once—the Anubis flight to Dallas—she didn’t know exactly how expensive it was, but the large amount of baggage seemed staggering as Jason and the driver continued to pull objects out as if they’d been in a clown car.

“Oh, we got our own plane! It was super cool, and lots of legroom!” Willow gushed.

“Yes, Eric chartered a flight for us. Considering the plane usually had room for travel coffins, there was plenty of space to store our bags,” Giles explained. Again, this was the generous Eric Lavinia had spoken of, someone Sookie was sure she’d never met.

“Well, let’s get started carrying this into the house,” she said, grabbing a pink piece of luggage and hauling it up the stairs and into the foyer. “After we get everything organized there are some snacks in the kitchen waiting for you.”

She didn’t exactly know how she became hostess, but she continued playing it by ear. It took an hour for everything to be brought in and rooms to be arranged. Giles asked where to take the trunk—apparently, it was full of books—and Sookie recalled Eric telling them Godric’s library was kept in what was once a basketball court.

“Just follow me, I think it’s this way...”

Giles carried some smaller pieces of luggage while Xander and Jason carried the trunk through the house, around the pool, and to an outbuilding Sookie guessed was the library. She opened the door to see a bright room filled with books—a modern take on the library the Beast gave Belle, complete with two stories and its own ladders.

Giles seemed floored at the size of the library—floored and delighted—and Sookie couldn’t say she felt much different. Bookcases lined every wall with a gallery giving access to the second story of books, with staircases at both ends. There were several large seating arrangements, along with a large table and chairs—all in the same Scandinavian minimalism style as the house—and the rest of the open space was full of even more freestanding bookcases. A large card catalog stood in the middle of the room, and a fireplace had been built at one end.

“Eric said Godric’s library was legendary, and I have to agree,” Giles said, placing his bags on the table. “This is definitely bigger than the Sunnydale High School library, not that a school library ever had access to a real Guttenberg Bible.”

Xander and Jason put the trunk in the middle of the room and were followed by an overwhelmed Andrew and an enthusiastic Willow.

“Look at all these books!” The redhead said. “I don’t think the coven in Devon had a library this big!” She ran over to a wall, pulling out a book at random. “First edition of _Utopia_! In Latin!”

Andrew followed a wall towards the back. “Mr. Giles! The wall back here—full of _scrolls_!” Giles immediately followed.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it... but there’s some food in the kitchen, for whenever you’re ready...” Sookie offered. Jason and Xander followed her out, leaving the bibliophiles to their own utopia.

When Sookie entered the kitchen from a side door, followed by Jason and Xander she found Buffy, Dawn, and Kennedy at the breakfast table, already noshing on Lavinia’s appetizer trays.

“I gotta say,” Buffy said in between bites. “This place may not be as big as the Slayer’s castle in Scotland, but damn is the weather better.”

“Y’all have a castle?”

“One of the assets left of the old Watcher’s Council. Those guys were absolutely _loaded_ , but they expected Buffy to slay for nothing.” Dawn explained.

“Bubkis,” Buffy confirmed.

“But, like, in the final battle before Sunnydale became a crater, the Watcher’s Mayfair headquarters went KABOOM! And all the assholes died.”

“Leaving Giles the sole trustee of the Watcher’s fortune!”

“Plus, the insurance payment for the Mayfair location was insane!”

“Turns out the British government knows about Slayers and has been making payouts to the Watcher’s Council for years.”

“And now all that money is ours—enough to fund an army.”

Sookie didn’t really follow the back-and-forth between the two sisters. She didn't know exactly what Dawn meant by an army, and she couldn't quite get a grasp on what it was, exactly, that the Slayer did.

“So are y’all like, spies or something? Like James Bond?” Jason said, with his mouth full. He was obviously coming to his own conclusions.

Buffy looked at Dawn as both considered the description, but Xander interjected.

“I am the James Bond of this outfit—”

“Xander, with that eyepatch you could pass as a Bond villain maybe?” Dawn suggested.

“Or Number 2, from _Austin Powers_ ,” Buffy continued.

Xander waited to find a response. “Okay, that’s fair... but then who’s the James Bond?”

“Spike could have been the James Bond. At least he was British.” Dawn had a mischievous glint in her eye as she gauged both her sister and Xander’s response to her answer. Sookie took her shields down, and all three were thinking of a man with bleached blond hair and a long, dark coat. Their emotions about the man were mixed—Xander had contempt, Buffy had sadness, and Dawn had regret.

“Who’s Spike?” Jason asked.

“We don’t talk about the Evil Dead, Dawn,” Xander frowned, overemphasizing his words as if this was a subject he and Dawn had been over many times before.

“He’s a vampire we once knew,” was all Buffy said.

“Died to save the world, gotta give him credit for that.” Dawn was staring intently at Xander as if daring him to say something bad.

Kennedy had been watching the banter going back and forth around her, and she finally took the moment to interrupt Dawn and Xander’s standoff.

“So, when are the other vampires going to wake up?” She turned and asked Sookie.

“A little after sunset," she answered, "which is around seven this evening.”

“Then let’s reconvene around 7:30. We’ll get the nerds out of the library and meet the vampires.” Buffy said it as if she were used to making declarations. “I’m gonna go take a shower and a nap, in that order.” As she walked away, Sookie glimpsed her mind—it was still on the blond vampire, Spike—though she was acting as if she didn’t care.


	4. Devil Town

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wes, Spike, and Illyria hit the local watering hole, while Buffy tries gumbo for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends!
> 
> I have another chapter for you, and again it borders on 10k words. I don’t know what I’m doing with myself. Some very interesting meetings happen in this chapter, and I’m certain you’ll enjoy the characters you’re visiting with. In a comment I did promise the appearance of a character in chapter 4 who will actually show up in chapter 5, so consider these fan favorites just bonuses. This chapter also includes a closing line I came up with back in 2013 that I’m quite tickled by.
> 
> The castle in Scotland mentioned as a Slayer stronghold comes from the _Season 8_ comics, but other than a few interesting bits those should be avoided at all costs. That thing was a shit show where the universe date-raped Buffy and Angel and Spike showed up in a space ship crewed by giant bugs. _Season 9_ was much better, and for _Season 10_ and _Season 11_ Buffy and Spike were in a happy, stable relationship where they raised poker kittens together. However, they were broken up in _Season 12_ for arbitrary reasons, mostly because the powers that be don't have the balls to settle the love triangle one way or another, and I gave up any hope in the franchise.
> 
> I’m almost (ALMOST!) finished with the outline, and this thing is a doozy, but writing is still coming pretty easy, and I’m unemployed and in quarantine, so I don’t expect anything to affect the flow of chapters. 
> 
> Title comes from a Tony Lucca song from the _Friday Night Lights_ original soundtrack. Bon Temps is, of course, the Devil Town in question, one of those iconic TV locations that really serves as a character itself—much like Sunnydale.
> 
> So you know I really don’t like how _True Blood_ went down, right? However, while I object to the content of _True Blood_ , I fully and support and appreciate the format: at its heart, _True Blood_ was an ensemble show, with multiple storylines playing out at once in any given episode. Sometimes certain storylines would take precedence, but it still had enough material for every character to be in play.
> 
> That’s what I’m doing with this fic. It’s an ensemble story, with multiple points of view and various storylines in play, all at once. So, you may not be hearing from the characters in the primary ships (E/S, B/S) for various reasons, but they’re still present. This isn’t like normal shipper fic, where the focus narrows to the OTP of choice and we stay in their perspective because our only concern is their story. This is much broader, likely because of the way I’ve been trained to write TV episodes, with “A” and “B” storylines, along with “C,” “D,” and “E” stories.
> 
> I’m having fun playing with the multiple perspectives of this fic, and the various voices necessary to make everything work. So, while it may not be shippy enough for you, the bones of a shipper fic are there, mixed with other, more ensemble storylines.

**_Dinner and a Show_ **

**Bon Temps, Louisiana**

Bon Temps, so far, had been a bust. Wesley Wyndham-Price hadn’t wanted to admit it, but ever since they arrived, he couldn’t find anything worthy of interest in the town. It was the Deep South, and they were in the country, and he could almost hear the dueling banjos in the background. It could serve as an anthropological study of the American Redneck, but otherwise, there wasn’t much to see.

He, Spike, and Illyria had arrived late the previous night, settling into rooms at the Bon Temps Inn, a disreputable place that seemingly hadn’t changed much since the late sixties. The rooms smelled of the bayou, and their green-and-orange color schemes gave him a headache. Spike, however, had been delighted that they had a light-tight room available, and spent the day watching the telly while Wes scoped out the area.

There was a Grab It Quick, a Dairy Queen, a Baptist church, and a bar. That was the extent of the town. He entered the Sheriff’s department, curious if there was anything going on, but a competent black deputy named Kenya made it clear there was nothing to see, especially for outsiders. Whether she was telling the truth Wes didn’t know, but someone did mention the Sheriff was out for the day under strange circumstances, so Wes spent the rest of the afternoon at the Dairy Queen, listening to a group of teenagers gossiping about Homecoming, hoping something would spark his interest.

A very large woman came in for a Blizzard around four. This seemed to be a regular occurrence, as the girl at the counter greeted her by name, but “Maxine” decided to spend her time watching Wes watch everyone else. It was clear he was an outsider, and before she left Maxine had whispered to the staff to “keep an eye” on him while he remained. Taking that as a cue, Wes threw out his trash and went back to the motel.

Illyria had chosen to stay with Spike in the motel room during the day, having become obsessed with the classic Game Boy Spike had gifted her with for the plane ride. Wes wasn’t certain if she had moved at all while he was gone; when he returned from the Dairy Queen she was still in the ugly, flower-covered chair in the corner she’d been sitting in when he left.

“Has Illyria been there all day?” He asked Spike, who was lounged on the bed channel surfing. The bed’s comforter was in the corner of the room, smelling somewhat charred. There were bags of chips and a half-finished bottle of Jack Daniels on the table, cigarettes in the ashtray, and wrappers for Hostess Twinkies filling the trash bin. The room was a mess, but neither of its occupants seemed to mind.

“Well, at one point she needed batteries, so I grabbed a blanket and we went over to the Grab It Quick. Couldn’t exactly send ‘er out alone, could I?”

“You risked the sun for batteries?”

Spike looked at him as if this were an obvious question.

“Of course. Gotta be a good pet and all.”

“How did the locals take your appearance?”

“It was a riot.” Spike grinned, obviously tickled. He sat up from his lounging position, as if better to tell the story. “So we run across the street to the Grab It Quick, an’ the blanket I’m using is burning, right? I’m stomping the fire out while Blue is perusing the shelves, and it’s not like we’ve ever taken ‘er to a 7-Eleven, have we? We spent about an hour there while I explained junk food to her. She insisted on trying Doritos, pretzels, Chex Mix, Slim Jims, all the classics, while I got another pack of cigarettes and a bottle of Jack.”

Spike seemed to be warming to his story as he actually stopped channel surfing for a moment.

“By then there’s this fat bird in a terrible hat in there, watching us, an’ she’s telling us this is a god-fearing town and all, so I drop a little fang, get the bumpies, just to get a rise out of her. Well this bird, she just glares at me and asks why I’m not like Vampire Bill. Then she tells me there’s a local vampire, and the guy’s name actually is Bill. I mean, with a name like that, surely you’d change it when you came over, right? Heinrich became the Master, Liam became Angelus, I became Spike... Darla and Dru didn’t change their names, but any decent bloke has to know a vampire needs a more aggressive name than Bill!”

“So, you had your adventures, I see. Do you think this ‘Vampire Bill’ could be the source of the supernatural disturbance?”

Spike gave Wes a blank look. “Bloke’s name is Bill. How bad can a bloke named Bill be?”

“He sounds like a fixture of the town, at any rate, so I don’t suppose there’s much of a disturbance.”

“You find anything?”

“I believe the town gossip is named Maxine... and that’s the extent of my intelligence.” Wes frowned. While, so far, this had been somewhat of an enlightening trip for Illyria, he couldn’t seem to find anything remarkable about the town itself. “Night’s falling. There’s a place called Merlotte’s, out in the bayou, or so the girl at the front desk told me. Might as well grab something to eat.”

“You sure about that, Wes?” Spike asked. “This town is a little too close to _Deliverance_ for my tastes.”

“I was thinking _Texas Chainsaw Massacre_ , but we are in Louisiana, after all.”

“Hey, Blue, wanna see a real live honkytonk?” Spike asked.

Illyria looked up from her video game screen. “Would this activity merit a break from the plumber’s quest to rescue the princess?”

“Eh, Mario will still be there when we get back.”

“Then I shall accompany you.” Illyria’s monotone held no real opinion on the matter, but if her pet felt this would be an opportunity to educate her on this world, like their lessons on junk food earlier had served, she would take it.

They piled into Wes’s rental—a Land Cruiser, of all things, with necro-tempered glass—and drove down the back road to the restaurant. The parking lot itself served as a warning of the bar’s clientele—the Land Cruiser stuck out like a sore thumb. Everything else older and dirtier, and a few trucks seemed to be tricked out to be bigger than the already large SUV. Someone was obviously compensating for something.

It was with great caution that Wes and his companions entered the establishment. Fear of the rural aside, they were there to investigate some sort of rising evil, which could mean anything from racist Republican congressmen to walking dead zombies.

“Bloody hell,” Spike exclaimed the moment they stepped inside. “Do we really need that caterwauling?” He was obviously complaining about the music playing. Garth Brooks was singing about knowing people in low places, and it obviously didn’t agree with the Big Bad. “At the very least they could have had some zydeco music playing, but bloody Garth Brooks?” He reached into the pocket of his duster, pulled out a handful of quarters, and headed towards the jukebox.

Wes watched him go before scanning the restaurant for himself. Dark wood, vinyl booths, and beer signs, it was a dive bar as only the deep south could provide. A few pool tables stood in the back, and the rednecks currently playing a game seemed to stop what they were doing the moment they arrived to watch them.

In fact, everyone seemed to be watching—outsiders were obviously an anomaly here, and the curiosity—mixed with a large dose of hostility—was palpable. The waitresses stopped to watch, the other diners turned to look at them, even a florid drunk at the bar turned on her stool to glance at the newcomers, and Wes felt on display. The only sign of welcome came from the black cook manning the stove—dressed in a glittery do-rag and mesh shirt—who gave him a salacious wink.

One of the waitresses obviously found her manners, and she finally walked over to them with a cheery smile.

“Hi y’all, I’m Holly. Welcome to Merlotte’s. It’ll be three of you tonight?”

Wes nodded, and she led Illyria and himself to a booth. If she were curious about what a blue-haired woman in body armor was doing in rural Louisiana, she didn’t show it.

“Thank you,” Wes said, as she gave him a menu.

The music playing over the loudspeaker changed. Instead of Garth Brooks, the Clash was now singing about rocking the casbah, and a relieved Spike returned to join them.

“That’s much better!” he said, before turning to Holly.

“Hello!” Holly said, customer service smile in place.

“Hello love!” Spike said personably as he grabbed his menu.

“Can I get y’all anything to drink?”

“I’ll have whatever is on tap,” Wes announced.

“Jack Daniels, with a TruBlood chaser, if you got it, love.” It had become Spike’s go-to drink since the synthetic blood became popular.

“We still got plenty of that, even if the factories were bombed,” Holly said conversationally as if she were talking about the weather instead of an act of terrorism.

“I shall have something carbonated,” Illyria announced without glancing in Holly’s direction.

“Okay...” Holly’s good cheer wavered for the first time.

“She likes the bubbles,” Spike explained. “Blue will have a Root Beer, Holly, with a maraschino cherry if you’ve got it,” he clarified, earning himself a smile.

“We sure do! I’ll be right back with your drinks!”

Spike and Wes sat back after the waitress left and glanced around again. Wes could hear whispers going back and forth between indiscreet locals.

“More of them vampers” was heard from one or two people, and another wondered what exactly Illyria was. When Wes spoke, a few nearby customers commented on his accent, as if they’d never heard properly spoken English before.

Spike, ADHD vampire that he was, began tapping the table with his hands to the song’s drumbeat before he casually started singing along—all the while continuing to scan the other bar patrons for anyone stepping out of line.

“ _Sharia don’t like it.... rock the casbah, rockin’ the casbah..._ ”

No one seemed to complain about the music change, which made Wes’s estimation of the citizens of Bon Temps go up; at least they were wise enough to leave Spike to his punk.

“Those men seem to be playing a game,” Illyria commented, watching as the rednecks got back to their game of pool.

“That’s pool, Blue. We can have some fun scamming those good ol’ boys out of their money later.”

Wes turned to Spike. “Are you actually hoping for a bar fight?”

Spike just shrugged. “Well, yeah. Gotta get me kicks somehow.”

Wes rolled his eyes.

Holly returned with their drinks.

“Here y’all are!” she said, handing them out.

Spike immediately downed his shot of whiskey. “I’ll have another one o’ those, love, if you don’t mind?” He asked before chugging the TruBlood.

“Sure thing!” she said. She was being so friendly Wes decided to feel her out, see if she knew anything about Bon Temps.

“So, Holly, are you from around here?”

“Sure am! Bon Temps is a safe little town—a great place to raise my boys—even if sometimes things get... a little out of hand.”

Both Spike and Wes perked up at her words, all said with the same customer service smile.

“Really love?” Spike asked. “How so? We’re obviously not from here, but it seems like a sleepy, quiet place.”

Holly seemed to pause at that, weighing her words. She glanced around her, scoping out where the other waitress was—a redhead whose hair color didn’t appear in nature—as well as the two cooks—the black man winked at Wes again. Quite forward.

“Look, we don’t like to see anything untoward happening,” she said quietly, bringing her face closer. “But between you and me, some weird shit goes down here.”

Spike and Wes looked at each other.

“What do you mean?” Wes asked.

“Shit you probably wouldn’t believe.”

Spike almost laughed. “You’d be surprised. We travel in more... peculiar circles, if you know what I mean.”

Holly looked him up and down. “You certainly are different from the other vamps we see ‘round here,” she commented. “Well, I’ll be having a break in about twenty minutes, maybe you can join me outside for a smoke?”

A wide grin split Spike’s face. “Sure thing, love,” he said, leaning back again.

“So, what can I get y’all to eat?” Back to her customer service voice, she looked at Wes, but Spike interrupted.

“You got any of those bloomin’ onions?”

Holly gave him a look. “Sure do... wait, you eat?”

Again, Spike grinned. “I have a rather delicate palate, but yeah, I eat.”

Holly seemed momentarily fascinated. “Really? That’s interesting... maybe you can tell me about that later.” Spike nodded and winked. She turned to Wes. “And for you?”

“The Burger Lafayette, no onions, please. And the sweet potato fries.” Wes handed his menu back.

“Lafayette makes a mean burger!” Holly said in approval, then looked towards Illyria. “Um... and for your lady friend?”

Illyria turned, finally looking Holly in the face. “I am Illyria, god-king of the primordium,” she said blankly, as if that explained everything.

“Okay...”

“I shall have anything with high protein content. I do not eat for pleasure; I only seek sustenance for this shell to function.”

Holly remained taken aback but quickly caught herself, returning to the customer service smile. “Okay... chicken fingers for you...”

She turned back to Wes and Spike. “I’ll have that out for you in a jiffy!” She grinned and turned away, having handled the oddity that was Illyria fairly well, in Wes’s estimation.

“That turned out easier than I expected,” Spike said. “I thought we’d have to hold the whole place hostage to get some answers.

“Yes, she seemed incredibly at ease with the idea of the supernatural.” Wes surmised there was much more about Bon Temps than met the eye.

As if on cue, something rather unexpected happened next.

An older man, portly and balding, brought in a squalling baby in a car seat, setting it on a table before going back outside. He returned, carrying another squalling baby, and repeated until a large table meant for groups had four baby carriers lined up next to each other, all with screaming babies.

“Holly, I can’t get ‘em to shut up!” The man said. Wes looked around, to see if anyone else found the quadruplets worth mentioning, but nobody else apparently found it remarkable, except for the florid drunk at the bar who wiggled her fingers at the babies and exclaimed “hey girls!”

Their waitress walked up to the man, obviously annoyed though she wasn’t taken aback by the presence of the quadruplets.

“Andy Bellefleur, I swear at some point you’re gonna hafta raise those babies yourself!” Holly scolded, even as she picked one of the crying babies up. The redheaded waitress joined them, picking up another noisy infant. Both women checked the babies’ nappies, and as one they stared at Andy with exasperation.

“They’re wet, Andy!” Holly sighed, putting the baby back in the carrier. “I thought we showed you how to change their diapers!”

“But it’s like they’re coordinated! They all wet themselves at once, and how’m I supposed to know which one to change first?”

“You just pick one and you do it,” the redhead chided, laying a baby blanket on an empty table. Another remarkable thing happened: the redhead proceeded to change one of the babies, right there on the table, in plain sight. Wes didn’t know if this were something that regularly happened in the south, or if it were more specific to Bon Temps... and he didn’t really want to know.

After the redhead returned the changed baby to its carrier, Holly placed the baby she was holding on the blanket and changed its nappy next. The florid drunk walked over and picked up a third baby and began singing to it.

“Jane, don’t you go dropping that baby now,” the redhead scolded.

“Don’t worry Arlene!” The drunk chided. “She likes me!”

Holly finished changing the baby she held and returned it to the carrier, grabbing the baby Jane was holding. “Andy look, I have tomorrow off and I’ll come to the house and help you out with the girls, but you can’t just bring them to me and Arlene anytime they cry!” She put the third baby on the blanket and gave it a change. As she returned it to its carrier, Arlene had taken the fourth and prepared to give it a change, as if the two women were tag-teaming each other.

Holly was still giving Andy an exasperated look as Arlene returned the last baby to its carrier and picked up the blanket, hanging it over Andy’s arm. Holly returned with some Lysol spray and a washcloth, and Wes was reassured when she began cleaning the table that had been used to change all four babies while Arlene took four dirty nappies to the trash.

“Don’t you put those things in my kitchen,” the black cook told Arlene. “You take those straight outside to the dumpster!”

“Trash is trash!” Arlene complained, even as she left through a side door.

An overwhelmed Andy sat down at the table with the four baby carriers. The babies were all quiet and content for the moment, but Andy still looked lost. He gave Holly a desperate plea.

“It wasn’t like I planned to have four daughters at once,” he argued.

Holly sighed and patted his shoulder. “We’re still here for you, Andy, but you gotta take some responsibility, at least while we’re at work! What would Sam say if he were here?”

“Well... if Sam had kids, wouldn’t he have a litter too?”

At this Spike met Wes’s eyes. _Litter_?

“I don’t know if he’d have a litter of puppies or not. It’s not like he’s a wolf, Andy.”

A returned Arlene washed her hands at the sink and went back to stand with Andy and Holly.

“You know, Terry’s real good with Mikey,” she told Andy. “Maybe you should ask him for help.”

Andy looked towards the kitchen, at the other cook—the tall bearded one who wasn’t trying to eye-fuck Wes.

“Hey Terry, can you help me with the girls tomorrow?”

Wes watched as Terry raised a spatula in answer. Again, he looked around the room to see if anyone else was watching the drama portrayed in front of them, but everyone seemed to be minding their own business. Holly went behind the bar to wash her own hands.

Spike, too, was scanning the room before he leaned forward to whisper to Wes.

“I smell magic,” he said before sniffing in an obvious way. “It’s magic they only have in Merry Old—magic I haven’t smelled in a century.”

“What kind of magic?” Wes asked.

“Fae.”

Wes leaned back, trying to understand the possible consequences of this revelation. “But the fae—”

“Closed themselves off? Years ago, even if Dru said the fairies still spoke to her, nattering on...” He glanced over at the babies. “Fairies always breed in multiples.”

“So you’re saying those babies are fae?”

“Half-fae, at most. Andy o’er there is most definitely human, but I don’t know about their mum.”

Wes sat back. “Well, that _is_ interesting.”

Holly came up to the table, carrying their food. She gave Wes his burger, slid Spike his blooming onion, and placed a basket of chicken fingers in front of Illyria, along with a bottle of ketchup.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” she said, looking over at Andy. “New father and all.”

Spike nodded. “Where’s their mum?” he asked, innocently.

Holly grimaced. “She pretty much just showed up, had the babies, and split. Didn’t even tell Andy she was pregnant.”

“Leaving a lifelong bachelor with four babies to raise.” Wes’s tone of voice held nothing but sympathy as he met Holly’s eyes.

“That man can barely take care of himself,” she replied, shaking her head, though her voice was strangely filled with affection. Finally, she just shrugged, then looked to Spike. “I have my break in ten minutes. Meet you outside?”

“Lookin’ forward to it, love,” Spike said, before digging into his blooming onion.

Once Holly was gone Wes noticed Illyria staring intently at the ketchup bottle. She’d picked it up, removed the lid, and was smelling it.

“What is this substance?” She asked.

“Ketchup, Blue,” Spike answered, grabbing the bottle and pouring a generous amount near the fries in Illyria’s chicken fingers. “You dip stuff in, give it a bit of flavor.” He demonstrated with one of her fries.

Illyria imitated the gesture, concentrating intently while she chewed the fry.

“This food is... complex. Lots of carbohydrates and starches... but with the ketchup, it is more... pleasant.” She dipped another fry in the ketchup.

“There you go, girl!” Spike patted her on the back to celebrate her newly acquired taste for condiments.

Wes shook his head and decided to ignore them and enjoy his burger.

A few moments later Holly looked over to Spike, raising her eyebrow and nodding to the back door.

Wes watched as he exited, pulling out his pack of cigarettes.

Left alone, he looked at Illyria, who had almost finished the ketchup on her plate.

“I require more of this... ketchup.” She mechanically reached for the bottle and turned it over, waiting for the ketchup to pour out.

It didn’t. Illyria was being introduced to the frustrating battle of pouring out ketchup every American had been subjected to in the time before squeeze bottles.

“What is wrong? Why is the ketchup not coming out?”

Wes sighed, grabbed the bottle from Illyria, and his butter knife, showing her how to coax the condiment onto her fries. He looked towards the door Spike exited, wondering what Holly was telling him. He glanced back at the kitchen, where the black cook took the opportunity to blow him a kiss. Wes responded with only a raised eyebrow.

The nosy town gossip Wes had seen at the Dairy Queen entered, followed by a tall, well-built young man who seemed a little sullen. The moment she saw Wes, she began whispering to the man.

“Hey, Maxine!” Arlene said, leading them to a table. Maxine glanced at Wes again, then took in Illyria, eyes agog.

“Who are they?” Maxine hissed. “I saw the one with glasses at the Dairy Queen today, snooping around!”

Arlene looked over at Wes, who nodded in acknowledgment.

“They’re just some customers, Maxine,” Arlene reassured before handing them menus.  
  
Wes and Maxine proceeded to have a staring contest, that only ended when Illyria turned her head and met Maxine’s eyes.

“That one is suspicious of our presence,” she said.

“I’ve noticed, but I don’t think she’s anything more than an old biddy,” Wes said, ignoring Maxine and getting back to his burger. He was almost finished by the time Spike returned, asking Holly over his shoulder for another round.

“Sure thing, Spike!” Holly answered. Apparently the Big Bad had a conquest.

“Babies are fae, but that’s the least of the shit going on in this town,” he summarized for Wes. “Serial killers, Maenads—they had a bloody orgy with a meat tree and everything.”

Wes raised his eyebrows. “I had no idea Maenads had immigrated to the Americas.”

“Yeah, well. Then there was all this shit with possessed witches, and our pal Vampire Bill almost met the sun because some necromancer from the Inquisition decided to fry all vampires.”

“Bloody hell,” Wes agreed.

“And get this: Vampire Bill is... was the King of Louisiana.”

At this Wes only rolled his eyes. “The Authority vampires and their asinine monarchs. About as useful as the British monarchy.”

Spike gave Wes a frown. “What, you don’t like the Windsors?”

“I have a more progressive view of British politics, much different from my father’s.”

“Oh yes, Sir Sidney Wyndham-Price,” Spike mocked. “But c’mon, didn’t you at least like Diana?”

“Well, yes... but...”

“And Harry’s a bit of interesting, even if William is a chip off the old block!”

Wes rolled his eyes at Spike’s argument. “We are getting off the subject at hand. Other than Maenads and possessed witches and fae babies, is there anything else we should be looking out for?”

“Apparently if anything supernatural is happening in Bon Temps, this other waitress, Sookie Stackhouse, is in the middle of it,” Spike said. “Best we start looking for her.”

**_Battle Plans and Planned Battles_ **

**Shreveport, Louisiana**

When Buffy woke up, it took a minute for her to remember where she was.

She had been napping in a large room with two full-sized beds. As had become their custom since Sunnydale, Dawn had claimed the other bed in the room, and her opened suitcase greeted Buffy when she opened her eyes, though her sister wasn’t around.

The sun had set, though there was a twilight gloom pouring in from the large windows that gave a stunning view of the lit up, manicured back yard. Buffy turned on a bedside light, sat up, and fully took in her surroundings.

The room was tasteful, one of the most luxurious she’d ever slept in, and she was certain the beds had 1,000-thread count sheets. It was a beautiful room with tasteful accents, but there was nothing personal about its décor. Buffy sat up, swinging her feet out of the bed, somewhat sad at the idea that this beautiful room was never used.

She reached for her own suitcase and pulled out a pair of jeans and a short-sleeved blouse. Her clothes weren’t exactly suited for Louisiana weather, but she’d have to make do. Hopefully, a shopping trip would be in her near future.

She stuck her head out of the bedroom, trying to hear where everyone was. She could only hear a woman singing distantly, but the smell of spices wafting up the stairs led her down to the kitchen.

Two large stew pots sat simmering over burners, and a large rice cooker was on the counter. Both were being utilized by a woman with dark skin and short dreadlocks, who gave Buffy a giant smile upon seeing her.

“Hi, cupcake! You must be one of Mr. Eric’s guests!”

“Ah, yes.” Buffy was taken aback by the woman’s friendliness, but pleasantly so. “I’m Buffy.”

It almost seemed impossible, but the woman’s smile deepened at her name. “You’re the Slayer!” she said as if meeting someone famous. “Oh, I should bring my Momma out to see you while I’m here!”

“Really? I’m just... Buffy...”

“Now listen. My Momma is an amateur historian, and her favorite subject is Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of Louisiana,” the woman said with pride. “Momma thought we descended from Marie, but that’s just an old family legend. Now, did you know that the Slayer was stationed in New Orleans around 1870? She was a Creole girl, I think her Watchers told her she was there to keep an eye on ol’ Marie, but she was mostly kept busy with vampires who were just as bad carpetbaggers as any you’d ever seen!”

Buffy was shocked, again pleasantly so, by the story this strange woman told. Slayers had been a secret for years, their histories known only to the Watchers’ Council. To have this woman treat the story of a historical Slayer so casually as if it were widely known, and with such enthusiasm was a nice change from the stuffy English Watchers she usually put up with.

“You know about Slayers?”

“Family history,” the woman said. “We may not be related to Marie Laveau, but my great-great-great-I don’t know how many greats—grandmother, she was a witch, and as a newly freed slave she helped Cécile-Thérèse—that was the Slayer—whenever she needed some witchcraft done. Apparently, she and Cécile-Thérèse’s Watcher, Sir Edward Price, were always butting heads, but Cécile knew what she was doing. My how-many-great grandmother Livia? Now she was a powerful witch, and as soon as she learned to write she began keeping a diary, with spells and stories about her adventures with Cécile, and my Momma now has that book.”

“So, your family are witches?”

“Oh, forgive my manners!” The woman said, wiping her hands on her apron and holding one out for Buffy to shake. “I’m Lavinia Porter, Mr. Eric’s day person, and resident witch.”

Buffy gladly shook her hand, raising an eyebrow. “Have you met Willow yet?”

Lavinia winked. “You’re not the first to mention Miss Willow to me! Your friend Xander said she’d want to pick my brain, but no one’s been able to get her out of the library all day!”

“I’m sure you’ll find a few of my companions are helpless to the lure of ancient books,” Buffy joked. “So, what’s cooking?”

Lavinia turned back to her pots, giving both a few good stirs. “Gumbo!” She said. “A family recipe that’s just as secret as Livia’s book of spells!”

Buffy smiled. She wanted to ask more about this Creole Slayer, Cécile, but she was interrupted by a man in a sharp gray suit entering the kitchen.

And what a man! Buffy didn’t know if she’d ever seen anyone taller, and with his blond hair and chiseled features, he could probably pass for Apollo or some other Greek god. He swung an arm around Lavinia.

“Is that your gumbo I smell?” he said.

“Sure is, Mr. Eric!”

“One of the great tragedies of my life, that I will never be able to try your cooking,” he lamented before sneaking a kiss on her cheek.

“Oh, go on, you big flirt!” Lavinia said though she was clearly tickled. “You got a Slayer to meet, Mr. Eric!” She nodded towards Buffy, who suddenly felt called to attention.

He looked at her with piercing blue eyes—and of course, she flashed to another pair of blue eyes—and raised an eyebrow at her.

“You’re Buffy?”

“Last time I checked,” she said, holding a hand to him.

A hand he ignored. Maybe these vampires didn’t shake hands?

Before they could start an awkward “nice to meet you” conversation, Lavinia interrupted. “Gumbo’s ready. You’d better gather the humans, and you can do introductions all at once!” Again, she winked at Buffy.

The man—Eric—stood up and nodded. “Of course,” he said, glancing at Buffy again.

“I’ll go grab the library brats... try to pull them away from their books...” she offered, feeling put under a microscope by those bluer-than-blue eyes.

“Very well. I’ll gather my sister and progeny, while you collect the humans.”

“Everything’s set up in the dining room,” Lavinia said with another smile. “It sure was nice to actually use all that good china you have, instead of letting it sit in the cupboard!” She was teasing Eric, and to Buffy’s amazement, he seemed okay with it. She was certain the vampire who had been staring at her so intently was rarely open to teasing.

“Yeah... I’ll get going...” Buffy awkwardly left the kitchen. As she padded to the doorway that would lead outside and to the library, she cursed herself for her bare feet, a detail she was certain the vampire hadn’t missed.

She gingerly walked across a thick lawn towards the library, and in spite of her embarrassment, it was actually quite nice to bury her toes in the green grass, certain that the grass in England was never this soft.

She entered a large building that was off to the side of the main house. It was big enough to be a gymnasium, but it had been mentioned it was a converted basketball court with bookcases replacing the nets. She entered a room the size of Sunnydale’s gym, with the largest home library she’d ever seen. _This would certainly be Giles’s paradise_ , she thought, seeing the man in question. He sat at a large table, a stack of books already in front of him. Willow was to the side, on a chaise lounge, equally occupied by a stack of books, and Andrew was also reading, sprawled on a large couch.

“The dinner bell is ringing,” she announced, and three heads bobbed up, having only then noticed her presence. Buffy watched Giles glance between her and the book he was reading, and she laughed at his obvious conflict. “Gotta eat sometime, Giles, and the chef’s a witch so I bet it’s gonna be good.”

“Ooh, the witch!” Willow asked, her interest piqued. She put her own book down and skipped to Buffy. “What’s she like?”

“Very nice,” Buffy said. “From a family of witches, and she’s remarkably comfortable around vampires.”

Giles had finally stood up, placing a bookmark before leaving the table. “I’ve been told witches in the South have long family lines, so it will be interesting to hear her stories.” He nodded to himself as if reconfirming his commitment to leave the books alone to go eat. Andrew, however, had sprung up like a bunny at the mention of food.

Buffy led the three back towards the house, inside, and into the dining room, where Xander and Jason Stackhouse had already settled themselves at one of two round tables. It was clear the two men were fast friends, making jokes with each other.

“So, gumbo has shrimp?” Xander asked.

“Shrimp gumbo, shrimp kebobs, shrimp deep-fried, stir-fried...” Jason answered.

“Pineapple shrimp, popcorn shrimp, coconut shrimp...”

“I see Forrest and Bubba are getting along great,” Dawn said, entering the dining room and choosing to sit at the other table.

“Dawn I have been denied the company of males my age for years!” Xander defended.

Willow giggled. “What about Andrew?”

“Andrew doesn’t count—no offense,” he offered.

“None taken,” was Andrew’s good-tempered answer.

“And anyway, there’s nothing wrong with an army of girls, but sometimes a man has to be a man, and do manly things,” Xander continued as if he were the expert on masculinity. Jason nodded approvingly, but Buffy and Dawn were snickering.

“Where’s there an army of girls,” Jason asked, suddenly interested.

“In a castle in Scotland,” Buffy answered, much to Jason’s disappointment.

The banter was interrupted by the entrance of a tall, young redhead who looked nervously between the two tables, eyes landing on Jason before she decided to go sit with Dawn.

“Hello, y’all,” she said politely. “I’m Jessica.” She was a vampire, but she looked more like she was attending a church social.

“Hi!” Dawn cheerfully replied. “I’m Dawn, this is my sister Buffy, and this is Willow.” She introduced everyone already at the table. “The manly man over at the other table is Xander.”

Two more vampires entered—an icy blonde and a woman with dark skin, glossy black hair, and the most ripped arms Buffy had ever seen. The blonde looked between the two tables, unable to choose where to sit. She finally sneered at Jessica, then sat at the other table, followed by the other woman.

“Jason Stackhouse if you open your mouth to say something inane, I will make sure your tongue is unavailable for you to say anything more,” was her only warning, and she didn’t deign to look at anyone else.

“If Jason avoids saying something stupid, I’m certain we’ll be seeing pigs fly next,” the black woman retorted.

“Tara, I thought you liked me! We have history an’ all!”

“Jason, I’ve put up with your shit for twenty years. Your puppy dog eyes don’t work on me no more.”

Buffy and Dawn looked at each other, enjoying the banter.

A dainty brunette entered the dining room, looked between the two tables, standing in the middle of the archway. She obviously sniffed the air, looking around at the newcomers. She sniffed again, then followed her nose to Dawn.

“I smell power,” she said, looking Buffy’s sister over as if she were something foreign and not quite human. “What exactly are you?”

“Well first of all, rude much?” Dawn snapped. “Second of all, I’m an inter-dimensional key turned from a ball of glowing green energy into a fourteen-year-old girl about seven years ago.” She rolled her eyes as if this were nothing out of the ordinary.

“The _fuck_?” Dark and Dangerous answered from the other table. “I thought I was extra, just for bein’ a vampire.”

“Tara, don’t be vulgar,” Blonde and Icy chided.

“What’s a... Inter-dimensional key? Does it have a lock?” Jason Stackhouse interjected, looking particularly perplexed and over-emphasizing the syllables of “inter-dimensional.” To Buffy, it appeared his brain was processing too much information at once.

Dawn huffed and looked over at Jason. “My blood opens doors to other universes. Like, I’m the wardrobe, and I can take you to Narnia.”

Jason didn’t have another comment, just continued to stare at Dawn as if she were a math problem too hard for him to complete. The brunette, meanwhile, scrutinized Dawn very carefully. Buffy almost didn’t like the way she was staring at her sister, as if she were doing calculus to the simple arithmetic Jason couldn’t seem to conquer.

“Whatever you’re thinking,” Buffy said in warning, “she’s off-limits.” She didn’t exactly know what the brunette was going to do with her knowledge of Dawn, but she was sure it would be nefarious. The brunette stood up and huffed, looking between the two tables before deciding to lean against a wall rather than grace anyone with her presence. That told Buffy a lot about her.

Finally, Lavinia entered, carrying a card table. Eric followed, carrying the pot of gumbo, and another unknown vampire—another brunette with green streaks in her hair—followed with the rice cooker.

“Here we are!” Lavinia called out, setting up the card table. Eric and the other vampire deposited the gumbo and rice cooker.

Giles stood up at their host’s appearance, holding his hand out. “Eric!”

“Hello, Rupert!” Unlike Buffy, apparently Eric found Giles worthy of shaking his hand. Buffy raised an eyebrow at this, even as the two men greeted each other congenially.

Willow watched them before leaning over to Buffy. “What a VILF!” she giggled in a whisper.

“A VILF?”

“Vampire I’d like to fuck!”

“Willow! You have a girlfriend! And I thought you were gay?” Buffy couldn’t help giggling at her friend’s whispered conversation.

“I may be gay, but I still have eyes!” she laughed, “and maybe I’d try stick again if it were one of those models!” both women were snickering at each other when said girlfriend entered the dining room.

While Willow was still dating Kennedy, the other Slayer never had quite gelled in with the other Scoobies. Willow gave her girlfriend a wave, while Buffy was more tepid at her arrival. Kennedy came to their table and frowned that Willow hadn’t saved a seat for her before sitting next to Jessica with an obvious sigh. It seemed Kennedy would be pouting through the dinner service.

“Is everyone here?” Lavinia asked, setting down a stack of beautiful china bowels next to the stew pot.

“Where’s Sook?” Jason asked, looking for his sister.

Apparently, she was the only person missing. Buffy looked around at everyone else then stood up. “I’ll go find her,” she offered, though she felt it was more of a reconnaissance mission. She didn’t exactly know what to think about the telepath, and maybe a little one-on-one time would help get a bead on her.

Buffy noticed Eric had also stood up to go get Sookie but sat back down next to Giles as Buffy left the dining room. As she walked by the brunette leaning against the wall rolled her eyes and threw herself down at an available chair. Looks like Kennedy wasn’t the only one who would be pouting tonight.

Buffy padded across the foyer, through the kitchen, and up the stairs. “Sookie?” She called out.

She eyed all the closed doors down the hall, wondering which room was Sookie’s, when the woman herself came out, shutting the door behind her.

“Yes?” She asked.

Buffy frowned. From what she could see, Sookie had been crying and was now trying very hard to cover it up.

“Dinner’s ready?”

“Oh, yes. Thank you.”

They went down the hall, but Buffy stopped at the stairs.

“You know, I’ve been told I have very good ears.”

“Good ears?”

“Yep. Good ears. If you need to bend someone’s ear, I’m your girl.”

“What?”

It was clear Buffy wasn’t making her point. She dialed back the banter.

“I’m a good listener if you need someone to talk to.”

Sookie shrugged and rubbed her eye with your pinky finger. “It’s nothing,” she said, “just... just an eyelash.”

Neither woman believed this, but Buffy decided to let it rest for the moment.

The two went down the stairs. In the dining room, Buffy sat back down at her chair next to Willow and watched as Sookie considered the last two available seats. One was at the other table—next to Eric—and one was next to Jessica. Sookie and Eric shared a look before Sookie looked away and sat at Buffy’s table.

Interesting.

Buffy’s curiosity about the players in this game was definitely piqued. Lavinia, however, didn’t seem to notice any underlying dynamics. “Well y’all, gumbo’s ready! Just grab a bowl and help yourself!”

Jason didn’t need any encouragement, grabbing the first bowl, tossing in scoopfuls of rice and pouring gumbo over it. Xander followed, as did Andrew.

The humans at Buffy’s table stood to get in line, but Willow turned to Lavinia, raising a hand. “Is gumbo supposed to be spicy?” She asked, laughing, “because I’m the whitest of white girls and ketchup is spicy to me!”

Lavinia chuckled. “You should be fine, sunshine!” She said. “Just get extra rice to soak up the spices!”

“So, I’m told you’re also a witch?” Willow asked as she served herself.

“Yes, I am, and you must be Willow!”

“That’s me!”

“Well, sometime tomorrow I gotta pick your brain. Everyone tells me you got deep powerful magic, and I’d love to hear all about it!”

“It’s a plan!” Willow answered, going back to her seat.

“Are you eating with us, Lavinia?” Buffy asked.

“No cupcake, I’m going back home to my husband. Y’all just enjoy, okay?” She reassured. She looked between the two tables at the vampires. “Can I get anyone a blood?”

Buffy and Dawn looked at each other, eyebrows raised. Lavinia spoke so casually about seeing to the needs of vampires. It was beyond either of their experiences—those experiences primarily consisting of Spike mixing his blood with Weetabix.

“Thank you, Lavinia,” Eric answered for the group, “but we’re fine.”

“All right, Mr. Eric!” she said. “I’m gonna head out now. When you’re done, just put any leftover gumbo in some Tupperware, and fill the pot to soak. I’ll clean it right up tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Lavinia, for this delicious dinner,” Giles said, an adult reminding the children to be polite. He was met with everyone’s echoed thanks.

“Y’all are so sweet! I’ll see you in the morning!” she said, waving goodbye.

The humans ate in relative silence for a moment, though the air was full of happy noises as they enjoyed their meal. Eric seemed to give them some time before he stood up and went to stand at the head of the room, between the two tables. He was framed by a picture window that showed the outside garden lit up at night.

“Now that I have you all together, I feel introductions are in order. You’ve met Sookie and Jason today, but tonight we also have my child, Pam Swynford de Beaufort with us,” he indicated the icy blonde, “and her progeny Tara Thornton,” the dark woman sitting next to her.

Pam gave the room something slightly less than a glare, but she was still pretty obviously cold. Tara remained silent as well, though she nodded to the new humans in acknowledgment.

Eric met Pam’s eyes as if willing her to be polite, but there was an obvious rift between the two of them. Eric sighed, or if it were anyone else it would have been a sigh. For him, it was an inhalation that raised his shoulders and brought attention to his perfect frame.

 _VILF is right_ , Buffy thought to herself, though she wasn’t the least bit tempted.

“My sister, Nora Gainsborough—” the petulant brunette— “as well as Jessica Hamby—” the redhead waved— “and Molly—excuse me, Molly, what’s your last name?”

Molly grinned. “Napoli, though I was very tempted to change it to Jobs when I came over,” she laughed. Willow also giggled, and the two women’s eyes met across the table—kindred spirits.

Eric smiled. “Yes, Molly Napoli is here to be in charge of communications and security.”

He looked to Giles, who stood where he was sitting. He felt the need to do the same introductions for his cohort.

“Thank you, Eric,” he said. “For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Rupert Giles, senior advisor to the Slayers Council. With me at this table is Xander Harris, an associate. Over at the next table, we have Buffy Summers, my Slayer—” Buffy grinned that he still called her _his_ Slayer— “Dawn Summers, her sister, and Willow Rosenberg, our resident witch.”

Willow made a point to smile and wave before Giles continued. “And we also have Andrew Wells, my assistant—”

Andrew interrupted. “I’m a watcher-in-training,” he said as if that raised his profile. Dawn gave a little giggle.

“Yes, Andrew, and Kennedy Cortez, an associate Slayer.” It was clear Kennedy didn’t like being called “just another Slayer,” but Buffy was used to her prickly behavior.

Before Eric could continue what was obviously becoming a briefing meeting, Xander cut in.

“You can refer to us, as a group, as the Scoobies,” he interjected, though the vampires couldn’t make sense of the reference—all except Molly, who chuckled. Xander looked between the vampires staring at him. “Scoobies? Like Scooby-Doo?” No response. They continued to watch him blankly, either because either they didn’t know what he was talking about, or because he wasn’t making sense. “Beuller? Beuller?” he tried. “The Scoobies!” he finished as if that was all the explanation necessary.

“What, may I ask, is a Scooby?” the icy blonde, Pam, asked. Xander withered at her condescending stare.

Jason, of all people, tried to explain. “Scooby-Doo! Like the cartoon! Y’all are the Scooby Gang!”

“Yes! Give the man a Kewpie doll!” Xander said, feeling saved, but the vampires still frowned.

Molly gave a sigh, then handed her phone to Eric. “ _Scooby-Doo_ was a 1970’s cartoon, about a group of teenagers who went around solving mysteries in an old van.” It sounded as if Molly were reading something off a Wikipedia page. Pam growled in annoyance at the digression of the conversation. “Most of the mysteries would appear to have supernatural elements but turn out to be bad guys in masks.”

Eric looked at Molly’s phone, before showing it to Pam.

“You named yourselves after a talking dog?” She said looking at Xander with clear disdain.

“We were teenagers at the time, and it sounded cool to us!” he insisted.

No one seemed up to backing him up. On the contrary, Andrew heaved a great sigh. “I have to agree with the vampires,” he said dramatically. “Much as I appreciate being counted among this noble cadre of superheroes, the name does lack something. Couldn’t you have chosen something like The Avengers or The Justice League?”

“Because Xander was so much like Shaggy!” Willow giggled. “And I was the Velma! Buffy was Daphne, and... who was our Fred?” She looked inquiringly at Buffy and Dawn.

“Spike!” Dawn announced. “Spike could have been our Fred!” She looked over at Xander as if wanting to make an issue of it. Buffy stayed quiet. She did, however, notice Eric and Pam sharing a look.

“Dawn, the Evil Dead was never part of the Scooby gang,” he corrected.

“Yes, he was!” she insisted. “When Buffy was... gone... he was just as much a part of it as Anya and Tara!”

Both Willow and Xander deflated at the mention of their lost loves. The vampires, meanwhile, seemed to allow the digression, as the conversation volleyed between the two tables.

“She’s right, Xander,” Willow said, quietly.

“Look, the Evil Dead is... dead, so it’s no longer relevant.” On his most magnanimous behavior, Xander nodded to Eric, giving him the floor again.

Eric raised an eyebrow, allowing anyone else to interject as needed, and continued when no one was willing to cross him. “Over the past few weeks, the Authority in charge of vampires in America has been undermined by a faction known as the Sanguinistas. These vampires are religious fanatics, reading the Book of Lilith literally instead of figuratively. Roman Zimojic, the Guardian in charge of the Authority and its Chancellors, was trying to root out the Sanguinistas when I was... recruited by Nora—” he nodded at his sister— “to become a Chancellor myself, along with King William Compton of Louisiana.”

“This is Mr. Bill?” Xander asked, interrupting. As one, he and Willow spoke in a high falsetto. “ _OH NOOOO!_ ”

Again, the vampires stared at Xander blankly.

“I guess no one here’s a classic _SNL_ fan,” he contended, trying to collect his dignity.

Completely ignoring Xander’s aside, Eric continued the briefing. “The Chancellors became further and further influenced by the Sanguinistas. One of them, Salome, chose to free Russell Edgington—”

It was Buffy who interrupted this time. “Isn’t he the vampire who eviscerated a guy on live TV?”

Eric nodded.

“I thought they killed him?”At this Eric sighed, frustrated. “It was believed it would be better for Edgington to suffer rather than just be ended, so he was enclosed in concrete, where he was supposed to stay. Salome freed him, and he went on a rampage with Steve Newlin. I can confirm he has now met the True Death, by my hand.”

Eric sighed and ran a hand through his hair before looking directly at Sookie. For her part, Sookie looked down, unable to meet his eyes.

 _Interesting_.

“Good for you,” Buffy said. “I’d throw you a party, but those never go well when there are apocalyptic situations at hand. So... tell me about Bill.”

Again, Eric looked at Sookie before speaking. “Bill came to Bon Temps as a procurer for Queen Sophie-Anne—”

He was interrupted by Dawn’s audible “eww.” Buffy knew what a procurer was. Eww, indeed.

Eric continued. “Sookie’s cousin Hadley was a pet of the queen’s, and spoke of her _interesting_ family, particularly about the cousin who was a telepath. The queen was thrilled at the idea of having her own telepath, so she sent Bill to... see if the rumors were true, and to secure Sookie by any means necessary.”

Sookie was still looking down at her plate. Buffy frowned. Wouldn’t the woman want to tell her own story? She looked to Eric, meeting his eyes and trying to convey she’d root out some information.

“Sookie?” she asked, gently. “Do you want to tell me what happened with Bill?”

The other woman shook her head. “No,” she said, quickly wiping a tear from her eye.

There was definitely a story there, and Buffy wouldn’t push, but in order to protect Sookie, she’d need to hear everything. She nodded at Eric, who continued with a very clinical description of Bill’s association with Sookie.

“Bill had... a relationship with Sookie. He was the first vampire she’d ever met... and she couldn’t hear vampire minds, so he was something different.”

Buffy continued to watch Sookie, who was still staring down at her gumbo.

Eric took an unnecessary swallow. It was as if he were trying to excuse Sookie, or at least absolve her of some guilt. There was a dynamic going on here. A definite vibe—it certainly was vibe-y—but Buffy couldn’t discern what exactly that vibe was, and she didn’t want to jump to conclusions.

“I found out what Bill was doing—why he came to Bon Temps. I told Sookie—and she disappeared for a year and a half. It turned out she was in Faerie, with her relatives.”

Giles, this time, couldn’t help interjecting.

“Really? Faerie? I hope you don’t mind, my dear, but I would like to chronicle what you saw there, for posterity and future reference.”

Buffy looked over at Giles and gave a shake of her head. He really wasn’t reading the room. Sookie gave him a quiet ascent, and Buffy looked at her with worry. It didn’t escape her that Eric was watching her with the same concern she was showing.

“Sookie returned from Faerie, and Bill was king. However, to protect her Bill and I killed Nan Flanagan, and that got us in trouble with the Authority.”

“Nan Flanagan’s the bey-otch from the AVL, right?” Dawn asked.

“She was the AVL spokesperson and, unknown to us, King Bill’s sponsor. He was one of her operatives. However, we were captured for killing her, and only Nora’s influence rescued us. The Sanguinistas were already infiltrating the Authority, and instead of killing Bill and myself, they recruited us.

“While we were part of the Authority, Lilith was using her influence to drive the Sanguinistas—”

“So, we’re considering Lilith a real person, or at least an entity, and not mere mythology?” Giles asked.

“Slayers are mythology, Rupert,” Eric answered. “Vampires were legends once, too, but there was always some kernel of truth to the legends. Lilith should be considered as real as a Christian would believe of Jesus Christ. Lilith’s influence led the Chancellors to begin killing each other, with everyone hoping they’d be the vessel through which Lilith would return.”

“And let me guess,” Buffy said, leaning back into her seat, “Ol’ Billy came out on top of the heap.”

“She was a false god, a destructive god, but he believed every word she said. I collected Sookie, hoping Bill would at least listen to her and think about what he was doing... but it didn’t work.” Buffy could feel Eric’s frustration in his words. It wasn’t clear if he were irritated with Bill or Sookie, but Buffy could make a good guess.

“I saw it,” she said. “In my dream. He was... horrible. Then he drank from that vial—”

“—The Blood of Lilith; supposedly collected by her followers upon her death. Lilith is apparently resurrecting herself, through Bill—”

“And nothing good can come of it,” Buffy said, reaching the same conclusion as Eric.

“Hence, why we need you.” Eric now spoke directly to Buffy. “I know Bill will come after Sookie—she made him feel too human, and now he is a being of pure vampire.” He looked at Jessica. “Bill is Jessica’s maker, so she’s also vulnerable. We don’t know what Bill is now, or what he has planned. I’m hoping you can help us with this.”

Eric was now entreating Buffy, looking at the Slayer like he was gambling his last dollar on her.

“Well,” Buffy said, reaching a conclusion. “sign me up, get me a katana, and call me Uma Thurman because I’m here to Kill Bill.” 


	5. Escape from New Orleans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An old friend makes an appearance, the Scoobies hit the books, and Nora questions Eric.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this has taken so long! I had some health problems and medical issues that left me either high as a kite or hungover as fuck, 
> 
> I should warn you that this story is going to get unexpectedly political. All of my political figures are fictional, though some have real-world counterparts. It should be noted that Senator Waylon Jones will be played by the great [Leslie Jordan](https://www.instagram.com/p/B_iwySKHAeO/), who is one of the people getting me through this pandemic. His Instagram is delightful, and I highly recommend it.
> 
> Dawn's section of this chapter, about Godric's library ( _Bibliothecam Magnam Godrici _is, according to Google Translate, the Latin for "Godric's Great Library) is a direct homage to[Ericizmine](https://ericizmine.com/), a lion of the fandom who was lost too soon. Her work is dense and plays on the comic book theme of multiverses, but one of the ongoing threads in her stories is about a house that holds a great library and other wonders hidden in its vaults. EricIzMine was lost too soon, and her work remains unfinished, but the possibilities of that library still haunt me.__
> 
> __Dawn's section also mentions the Bodleian Library at Oxford. All of my information comes from another vampire book series (A Discovery of Witches) where, instead of stalking nubile young ingenues the vampires get PhDs and do science to pass the time. I highly recommend them--they make Buffy seem juvenile and True Blood seem tawdry; these are definitely my kind of vampires._ _

**_In Another Life_ **

**(Shreveport, Louisiana)**

Nora Gainsborough had always admired her brother—among all other vampires, only their maker was held in higher esteem. Eric Northman, the vampire, was a credit to his race—ruthless and cold, clever and cutthroat, always ten steps ahead while others are still trying to figure out what game they were playing. He never liked politics, but he was always very good at it—good at supporting friends and outsmarting enemies. Why he remained only a Sheriff when he could have taken over the entire South was a mystery to her. Perhaps he just liked being a big fish in a small pond? No, that wasn’t it. It was more likely he just didn’t care for the paperwork required of being a vampire monarch.

She herself had always been different. Godric would always comment on how she was the ambitious one, and it was with Godric’s blessing that she severed ties to her maker so that she could join the Authority over three centuries before when vampire rule came to the New World. Vampires, you see, were never given to the patriarchy humans so loved; she found more freedom as a female vampire than she ever did as a human. Being a vampire allowed her to have ambitions, and both her maker and her brother encouraged her lofty goals, even if they didn’t wish to be above their station themselves.

Eric was always a leader, in spite of his subservient role as Sheriff. It was only because of the threat Eric held that Sophie-Anne Leclerq was able to rule Louisiana so long. Nora had heard the phrase, “speak softly, and carry a big stick,” and she’d always known Eric was the big stick who allowed Sophie-Anne to keep her crown. How it was that an incompetent like Bill Fucking Compton could defeat Sophie-Anne to become king had always eluded Nora; that is until she learned he had been sucking on Nan Flanagan’s tit for at least fifty years. Bill Compton was always pussy-whipped, controlled by women far more intelligent and powerful than himself: first his maker, then by Nan Flanagan. And yet it seemed Bill had also been ruled by a certain fairy pussy—a certain pussy that seemed to confound Nora.

What was it about Sookie Stackhouse that had men falling at her feet? She had never in their entire relationship seen her brother led around by his dick, and yet every single action he’d taken since coming back into her life seemed to revolve around Stackhouse. She’d better be one hell of a lay, Nora thought, even if she didn’t exactly look like some sex goddess.

As the humans’ dinner concluded Nora kept her eye on Stackhouse—even though every moment she knew her focus should have been on the Slayer. Yet it wasn’t the Slayer who had her brother so captivated—it was the fucking Stackhouse girl, who could barely make eye contact with anyone.

Her brother had been brought low. That was the only conclusion Nora could come to.

And now they were relying on the Slayer to save them.

Nora found she could respect the Slayer in a way she could never bring herself to see Sookie Stackhouse. The Slayer had agency; the Slayer was proactive. Sookie Fucking Stackhouse was merely reactive; allowing things to happen around her and letting it all sweep her up. This clearly led her to be a damsel in distress, and apparently Nora’s brother decided he was her brave Galahad.

Dinner concluded, the Watcher stood up, speaking to his little cohort of humans.

“Buffy, it seems, knows what her role in this conflict will be,” he concluded.

“I’m here to kill a vampire god. Reminds me of the good ol’ days in Sunnydale.” The Slayer and Watcher eyed each other, both with small smiles on their faces.

“Yes, it seems we’re in familiar territory. And as such, we will approach this as we would have in Sunnydale.” He paused, meeting each of his humans in the eye. “We now have an abundance of resources at our hands; it’s time to research.”

As one, the humans all groaned. “Book time, Giles? Really?” the one called Xander complained.

“You know very well how many apocalypses have been averted because we managed to find the solutions in books,” he chided.

“If I’m recalling things correctly,” Buffy noted, “the solution usually involved me sticking a stake at something, or cutting off its head, or just hitting really hard.”

“Yes, that is usually the conclusion our research would lead us to,” Giles conceded.

“I for one feel privileged to have access to so great a library as the one held in the basketball court,” the one called Andrew said with a flourish. Nora couldn’t quite see what the boy’s purpose was in this cohort the humans had formed—this Scooby Gang—but at least he had an appreciation for Godric’s library.

“It is pretty cool to use a card catalog,” Willow, the witch gushed.

“So, all we’re doing is gonna read books? How is that supposed to kill Vampire Bill?”

Nora inwardly groaned. Why were they keeping Jason Stackhouse alive again?

“Yes, Mr. Stackhouse, that is how we usually go about things.” Nora could give the Watcher some credit—it seemed he held Jason in the same esteem she did.

“Well, even if some of us aren’t very good researchers, we can all help in collecting the books the nerds will be reading,” the Slayer’s sister, Dawn said, giving Jason a gentle smile.

“Does this mean I can get out of research?” Xander asked, raising his hand hopefully.

“Xander, if you hoped to get out of research, you shouldn’t have spent the last three years trying to learn Latin,” Willow teased.

“I thought it would be closer to pig Latin! I didn’t know it would be all—helpful and stuff.” Nora caught his lie—the boy did want to be helpful, even if he was a hopeless case like Stackhouse.

“Sookie, while the book people go look at the books, do you want to help me clean up dinner?”

Nora watched the Slayer interact with Sookie Stackhouse. It was clear Buffy Summers was curious about the telepath and was trying to get more information out of her. She noticed her brother’s attentiveness to their conversation, and how he watched Sookie nod. His eyes followed her out of the dining room as she carried dishes to the kitchen.

“Very well, we should all get out to the library now,” the Watcher surmised. “Eric, do you care to join us?”

Her brother was called out of his trance watching Sookie by the Watcher’s words. “I actually do have some calls to make—with the Authority fallen, we’ll need to re-establish a relationship with the federal government if we hope to salvage the mainstreaming movement,” he said. “I’ll be in my office if you need me.” He looked towards his progeny. “Pam, why don’t you have Tara and Jessica help the Watcher in the library?” It was an order made to look like a suggestion, and Nora could clearly see Pamela resented it. He didn’t care to argue, leaving the dining room before Pam could respond.

“Yes, let’s all go read books. That will surely help us in this nightmare situation.” There was loathing in her words as she glared after her maker. “Tara, Jessica, come along.”

“Why the fuck do I have to read the books?” Tara said, obstinate.

“We need everyone right now. We’re utilizing Jason Fucking Stackhouse, so we’re already scraping the bottom of the barrel,” Pam said. Jason called out an offended “hey!” to which Pam sneered. “No offense, Jason.”

“Well, offense taken, fanger!” He responded.

“Okay, we’re going to deescalate now,” Xander interjected. “Jason, why don’t you come and help me. I know Latin now, and apparently that makes me an official researcher.”

“But—”

Xander didn’t let him finish, pulling him along. With a huff Pam followed, Tara and Jessica trailing behind her.

“Let’s go, Team Research!” the redheaded witch apparently was more enthused than anyone else to hit the books. As she left with the Watcher, the Slayer’s sister, and the boy, Andrew, Nora decided she’d keep an eye on her.

Finally, all that was left in the dining room were herself and Molly, the vampire the Authority had turned to oversee all their technological needs.

“You have access to the house’s security?” Nora asked.

“Yep. Gonna get a set up going in the wine cellar,” she said. “Eric told me to order anything I need. It should all be coming tomorrow, and I can keep the entire state monitored then.” Molly was astute enough to see Nora wasn’t in the mood to converse, so she quickly excused herself.

Nora sat in her seat in the middle of the dining room, alone, wondering how she got here. This was a giant clusterfuck, and she’d need her brother at the top of his game if they were to get out of it. Pushing her chair out, she went in pursuit of Eric.

She found him in a tasteful, light-tight office off the master bedroom. Dark wood with metal accents, a smaller collection of books, and a few artifacts clearly of Viking origin lined the walls, surrounding a giant desk in the middle of the room, with a small seating area to the side. Eric sat in a giant chair behind the desk, on the phone. He looked up when Nora entered, but didn’t say anything as she sat in one of two smaller chairs situated in front of the desk, giving a subtle show of power to anyone meeting with the Viking in this room.

“Please tell Senator Jones that Eric Northman is calling, Jeffrey, and it’s imperative that I speak to him tonight,” Eric was saying. Nora knew he was speaking of Senator Waylon Jones, the lone Democrat in the deep south chosen by special election under extenuating circumstances. Jones was like a unicorn; someone who valued tolerance in a state that produced people like Truman Burrell, those so certain in their righteousness that God himself was guiding their actions, even if it meant God was sowing hatred and intolerance.

Nora waited until Eric got off the phone. “That was Jones’s chief of staff,” he explained. “Jones needs to be woken up and apprised of the situation, but he’ll call back tonight.”

“Very good, brother.”

She stood from her seat, waltzed around the desk, and settled in his lap.

“Nora, what are you doing?” he asked.

“You need to relax, brother,” she asserted, and began kissing his neck.

“Not now, Nora,” he said, putting her off. He went so far as to push her off his lap.

“So, it’s true,” she said, almost shocked. “Are you being faithful to the fairy, Eric?”

“This doesn’t concern you, Nora...” she could feel his irritation in his words, though they remained steady and cold.

“Good God, you are absolutely fucked,” she said, shaking her head at him.

“What, Nora?” He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“Is it because Bill Compton is no longer competition?” If he was going to be icy to her, she could meet him with her disdain. “Are you now being faithful because you have a chance with her?”

“Nora, I’m going to say this to you once. My relationship with Sookie Stackhouse is no concern of yours. I need you to understand this and accept this and drop the goddamn subject.”

“Tell me one thing, Eric,” she said, staring at him.

“What?”

“Are you in love with her?”

He didn’t answer her immediately, seemed to think on how to respond. She saw more emotions cross his face at that moment than she’d seen in an entire century.

“In another life,” he finally said.

“And that’s how it is? How it’s going to be?” She asked, incredulous.

“Yes, Nora, that’s how it is.” She shook her head, unbelieving. All of her worst fears and conclusions about her brother’s relationship with Sookie Stackhouse were true. Her brother was in love, and it made him weak.

“Very well, Eric. _I_ will say this once—if you fuck this up because of her, I will end you, and Godric would have been glad of it.”

“Did you know Sookie Stackhouse met Godric?” He said, the ice remaining in his voice.

“How?”

“She was with him at the end. She stayed on that roof with him, when I could not.”

Nora didn’t respond. She wasn’t expecting this revelation.

“She stayed with him, and she told me he was finally free in the end. It was quick, and he felt no pain, and he had hope in the end because a human was shedding tears for him. So don’t you tell me what Godric would have thought about Sookie fucking Stackhouse.”

She was taken aback. Sookie Stackhouse? This _girl_ , this fairy-human hybrid, had been with their maker when she could not be? She had seen him in his final minutes? Again, she shook her head, not in disappointment this time, but in disbelief.

“I hope you know what you’re doing, brother,” she said and left him.

**_The Return_ **

**(Bon Temps, Louisiana)**

Daniel Osbourne didn’t know if he’d ever get used to the Louisiana humidity. He remembered Southern California could get as hot, but it was always more of a dry heat, and Sunnydale had been on the coast, so sea breezes kept temperatures mild. Even in his wolf form it was hot, the warm blood pulsing through his veins only adding to his temperature.

However, last night in New Orleans, he had found himself naked.

It wasn’t something he’d planned, getting scooped up by the Vampire Authority. He’d settled in New Orleans for a while, enjoying the company of other musicians who lived on the road. Music truly did soothe the savage beast, and Oz had found that playing in smoky jazz clubs regularly helped calm him whenever he felt his inner wolf needed to transform and run. He’d been in New Orleans longer than he’d been anywhere since Sunnydale, never settling. He knew that for self-preservation reasons he should maybe stay in one place and find a pack, but he’d been a lone wolf since his first turning, and he’d grown used to his own company.

After he finally left Willow and Sunnydale he drove north to Portland, living the hard-scrabble life of a traveling musician, and it suited him. He had his guitar and he had his bass, and long nights alone had become consumed with songwriting. Portland had been an oasis for him; the permissible crowds and music scene a balm to his broken heart. So what if every song he wrote was about Willow? In Portland, it turned out, there was a surprisingly large population of men whose girlfriends had left them for other women. He had compatriots, though he found the company of such men bitter, and he decided he’d rather be alone than become some woman-hating Neanderthal.

That’s when he took his van up to Seattle. The grunge capital of the world was as welcoming as Portland, and he stayed for a few months with a guy who worked for Microsoft who liked Oz’s music as well as that MENSA-level genius he’d always kept hidden—except around Willow.

Yeah, he’d had it bad, but he was never bitter. If he became bitter about Willow, he’d no longer be the easy-going Oz that she’d loved, and that seemed a fate worse than death. Besides, he’d survived Sunnydale, so life on the road felt like a cakewalk.

One day he’d decided to take his van cross-country, not quite sure where he was going. He stayed for a few months in Chicago, enjoying the jazz scene, and he’d been surprised how much he enjoyed Nashville—sure, you had the arena-style country artists and every Taylor Swift clone they could produce, but Nashville also had a strong folk scene, and one summer Oz decided to learn Johnny Cash’s entire catalog, just to challenge himself.

He went from Nashville to New York, staying in the Village for a while. Now there was a place he could have settled down, but his inner wolf just didn’t like being in such a concentrated metropolitan area. He still had friends in New York—one of whom he’d actually helped in writing an original musical based on _Clueless_ (he couldn’t help comparing Buffy to that story’s heroine)—but Oz quickly left, heading South.

Atlanta had been pretty good, actually. The music scene there was one-of-a-kind, and he stayed with an aspiring hip hop DJ who would always send him his latest original track, and Oz would play a few beats that would be layered into a composition, part of the backbeat that his friend would freestyle rap to. Oz’s big accomplishment in Atlanta had been learning to beatbox, a skill he didn’t even know he had until he tried.

After a while Oz left Atlanta, continuing to New Orleans. He’d been there for a year, and the music scene in the Treme neighborhood seemed to spark something in his soul. It was an area hard hit by Hurricane Katrina, but there was something resilient in all the musicians Oz met that he admired greatly and wanted to learn from. These musicians had lost everything, but they seemed to play with more freedom than Oz had ever heard. He had been staying with a trumpet player, occasionally working as a set musician or playing live on Bourbon Street.

The best part of New Orleans had been finding a fellow lone wolf. Jake was also a musician—a gifted pianist, which surprised the shit out of Oz, who never expected Jake’s broad wolf’s fingers could play with such clarity and emotion. The two had started to run together, driving out of the city every full moon and camping somewhere in the bayou. Occasionally they ran into a pack, but he and Jake readily took subservient positions to any Alphas—they didn’t want any trouble. New Orleans had been a good life.

Unfortunately, he’d been walking home three nights ago from a gig on Bourbon Street. He didn’t know how it happened, but some kind of vampire SWAT team surrounded him, incapacitating him, shooting him up with drugs, and knocking him out.

He woke up naked in a cell. It kind of sucked.

There were naked, crying humans all around him; most of them fearing their death. Something strange had happened to the vampires; the TruBlood factories had been bombed, and the vampires seemed to have gone feral. Oz had originally tried to fight, tried to help when one of the crying humans was dragged away by a vampire guard, never to be seen again, but the vampires tasered him, and he’d lost consciousness. Later, when he woke, it appeared they realized he wasn’t a normal human, and threatened him with silver bullets if he acted out.

It was lucky there wasn’t a full moon anytime during his captivity; Oz didn’t know what he would have done. The humans smelled, but Oz believed he caught the scent of someone like him, maybe a few cells over. He couldn’t see anyone, but Oz was somewhat reassured that he wasn’t alone.

The weirdest part of it all was when Steve Newlin, asshole minister turned asshole vampire came down to the cages, talking about his puppy. Oz didn’t think the puppy was a puppy, and his nose was telling him something was up.

It was the previous night that shit got really weird. Vampires were in and out, humans were crying—and he recognized a shapeshifter in another cell, maybe two of them. They seemed to have a plan, and Oz wanted to help, but he was too far away. He thought he saw them leave, and he hoped they succeeded.

Later that night two vampires and a human entered the cellblock, and the human opened all the cells with some kind of magic light that came from her hands. Oz being Oz, he didn’t question it, just took the rescue at face value. The cell doors opened, and it took a moment for the humans to realize they were free. The human—who was obviously not quite human—urged them to race up the emergency stairway and escape before one of the vampires with her picked her up and she herself was zoomed up the stairs.

Oz could have done his own supernatural race up the stairs, but he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t try to help. He began corralling the stupefied humans, urging them out of the cages.

“Come on, people! Let’s move!”

Herd mentality had taken over, and with Oz shouting at them like a sheepdog they shot up the stairs as fast as they could. He took up the rear, helping the stragglers pick up the pace and encouraging those who were slowing down to understand that they would be dying in those cages if they didn’t hurry up. Some of the smarter humans seemed to have found the ground floor, and the door leading from the stairway was propped open with an empty trash can.   
  
When Oz got there the humans were in the foyer of the Authority building, somewhat stupefied to be in the sprawling rococo entryway with elegant crown moldings and marble floors. Luckily there was no one around—but Oz began smelling smoke.

“Move it people!” he urged again, leading them towards the doors. The building appeared to be locked down, but Oz grabbed a desk chair and used his wolf strength to throw it at the glass doors until they shattered. He then prompted the humans to exit, and as the last one remaining he was still inside when the building caught fire.

Outside it was chaos, but the humans seemed to know enough to run away. And run they did—in all directions. There was no way for Oz to corral them now and lead them to safety somewhere outside the remote business park where the Authority had been housed, so he just prayed to whatever gods were out there that they’d find somewhere safe to go.

The building was now engulfed in flames. An SUV shot past Oz out of an underground parking lot, but there was no chance of finding another car anytime soon. Oz began making his way away from the authority building, but he caught sight of a man struggling to help a little girl. Both were naked—and what kind of sick fucks were they that they’d capture a kid? —and Oz ran up to them, hoping to get them away, and soon. He could smell charred vampires, and any minute whatever vampires were left in the building would be out there chasing after the humans.

“Dude, we gotta run!” Oz said, coming up to the man. He was of average height and build, with fair hair cut in something next to a mullet and stubble grown long enough to be called a beard. The little girl was dark-haired, and she was crying inconsolably.

“MOMMY!” she said, staring at the burning building.

“Emma, we gotta go!” The man said, picking the girl up. He ran with Oz into the woods, but Oz could smell charred vampire behind him.

“Go on,” he urged, reaching down for a broken branch of wood. He hadn’t done this since Sunnydale, and it seemed these were a very different kind of vampire, but the fucker running after them was already burning, and apparently Oz hadn’t lost the knack for staking vampires. Oz shot the branch into the vampire’s heart, but instead of turning into a pile of dust he burst out everywhere in blood and gore. It was gross, and messy, but Oz didn’t care. He took off running in the same direction as the man.

It turned out the man had waited for him, a little way into the wood. However, instead of being joined by a little girl, Oz saw he was now with a husky puppy.

Oz looked between the man and the puppy.

“You a wolf?” The man asked, looking at Oz’s confusion.

“Yeah...” Oz said, surprised the man could tell.

“Good, I’m a shifter. We gotta get outta here,” he said, in a deep drawl. “Turn, and you can run with us somewhere safe.” With that the man transformed into a dog—a collie, to be precise. Like Lassie.

Oz stared at the collie and the husky puppy, who were both looking at him, waiting. It was strange circumstances, and Oz didn’t often transform outside of the full moon, but his days in Sunnydale had prepared him for accepting weird shit at face value, so he shrugged and turned into a wolf, looking to follow the collie’s lead.

And so, two dogs and a wolf took off into the Louisiana bayou. It was the weirdest run of Oz’s life, but he went with it. They ran without stop—and the collie appeared to know where he was going, the puppy following obediently after. Around sunrise the collie stopped and looked at Oz. Just as the light began making its way through the tree cover, the collie turned back into a man. The puppy followed suit—turning into the little girl—so Oz figured it was time for himself to transform back into a human.

“Thanks for taking out that vamp back there,” was the first thing the man said to Oz.

“No problem. You’d be surprised by my weird history with vampires,” was all the explanation he gave.

“Sam Merlotte,” the man said, holding out his hand to shake. Both he and Oz were still covered in blood, but neither seemed to care as they shook hands.

“Daniel Osbourne, but you can call me Oz,” he said.

“This here’s Emma,” Sam said, wrapping an arm around the little girl. “We lost her Momma back there, but we’re gonna be fine, aren’t we, Sweetie?” He crouched down so he could meet the little girl at eye level. “I swear to you, Emma, we’ll get you back to your family.”

Both Sam and Emma looked as if they would cry, so Oz gave them a few moments to themselves.

Emma was still wrapped in Sam’s arms when he turned to Oz. “I’m thinkin’ we should lay low during the day,” he said, scanning the territory. “We’re about halfway to my home in Bon Temps, and we’ll get back there sometime tomorrow night.”

Oz, never very loquacious, simply nodded.

“You from the city?” Sam asked.

“No, but I’m staying there.”

Sam nodded back. “Well, I got my place out there. You’re welcome to come with, an’ we’ll get you sorted out b’fore going back to New Orleans,” he offered. Oz shrugged and thanked him. Sam quickly transformed back into a collie, and Emma became a husky puppy again. Oz turned back into a wolf, and the three of them sheltered for the day in a copse of wild oak covered in Spanish moss.

During the heat of the day Oz was glad not to be running. The humidity out here in the bayou was different from New Orleans, which could still boast of some sea breezes. When it got the worst Oz waded into some nearby water, taking a drink, but the sight of a gator watching him had him tripping back to the trees. He couldn’t be certain, because they were dogs, but Oz knew Sam and Emma were laughing at him.

Around dusk Sam stood up and transformed back into a human. “Sorry I didn’t warn you about the alligators,” he laughed. Oz smiled good-naturedly after he himself turned back into a human. Emma remained a husky puppy, even when Sam asked her to turn back. The puppy merely shook her head and continued to watch the older man.

“Okay, Emma. You just be ready to run, okay?” The husky nodded in assent. Sam turned to Oz.

“I got a bar out in Bon Temps and a trailer behind it. I can get you food and clothes, it will just take us about two hours to get there.” Oz nodded as Sam turned back to Emma. “Y’hear that, Emma? We’ll get you fed soon.” Again, the puppy seemed to nod, much like Oz had.

“Let’s go,” Sam said before turning back into a Collie. Oz himself transformed, and the three were off again.

It was around ten o'clock when Oz started to see more signs of habitation. Sam had led them along backroads, following rivers more than any set path, but he turned towards a little town, following a twisty two-lane road that seemed to be the main thoroughfare until he finally stopped outside what looked like a roadhouse in the middle of the bayou. Oz supposed this was Sam’s place, and the blinking green sign outside confirmed it. Sam turned back into a human, and Oz followed.

“This here’s my place,” Sam said as Oz transformed, then he looked at Emma. “You hungry?” The husky puppy turned back into a little girl, who nodded. Taking her hand, Sam led the three of them around the back. Oz had seen only a few cars in the parking lot—a few beat-up sedans, a lifted truck, and a pristine land cruiser standing out like a sore thumb—so he supposed the restaurant was still open. Sam led the way through a back door, past a walk-in refrigerator before stopping outside the kitchen.

“Lafayette,” Sam called out to a black cook dressed rather flamboyantly for the kitchen of a greasy spoon.

The man turned around. “Holy fuckin’ mother of God,” he said, taking in their appearance. Two naked men—one of whom Lafayette had never seen in his life—and a sullen, naked little girl stared back at him. “Sam Merlotte, what the hell is goin’ on?”

“Long story,” Sam said. “Can you grab a shirt for Emma and get her something to eat?” Lafayette nodded, giving Sam a look as if he expected an explanation soon before offering a hand to the little girl.

“Sure thang,” he said to Sam, then turned to Emma. “How ‘bout Auntie Lala gets you a grilled cheese sandwich. You like grilled cheese, honey lamb?” Emma offered a smile. “All right, then!” Lafayette said, before turning back to Sam. “You and your new friend go get cleaned up, then you’s telling me the whole damn story, you hear?” It was more a warning, and Sam winced.

“Sure will,” he said, before leading Oz back out the door. Back outside, Sam walked down a short, well-beaten path to a beat-up trailer. He opened the door and turned on the light. It was small, but it was clean, and as someone who lived in his van from time to time, Oz could appreciate the space. “You can have first shower, and I’ll get you a clean pair of clothes.”

“Thanks, man,” Oz said. He showered quickly, his hunger spurring him on. Lafayette may have been an unlikely chef, but the smells coming from that kitchen were mouthwatering. Sam wasn’t in the trailer when Oz got out, but there was a pair of jeans and an old T-shirt waiting for him on the table. He quickly changed, then walked back to the restaurant.

Lafayette wasn’t in the kitchen, so Oz walked all the way into the main bar area. Emma sat at a high stool, a grilled cheese sandwich in front of her, and Lafayette sitting at her side. The cook looked up at Oz’s approach.

“Now, hookah, you gonna tell me who you is, and how the hell you and Sam Merlotte got here, with this sweet young thing.”

Oz pulled up a stool next to Lafayette, who pranced behind the bar to get him a drink.

“I’m Oz,” he offered. “Few days ago, vampires caught me walking down Bourbon Street, shot me up with something. I found myself naked in a cell. All these humans were waiting to be food for the Authority vamps since shit is weird with them right now. I’m a werewolf, I got out and met up with Sam and Emma and came here.”

Lafayette placed a hand on his chest as if overwhelmed by Oz’s story. “Well you, wolf boy, is lucky to be alive! Weird shit is going down.” He met Oz’s gaze, then looked out in the restaurant towards another booth, raising his eyebrows. “I mean, we got vampire private eyes out here asking questions and shit.”

Oz followed Lafayette’s gaze towards the booth—then stopped short.

“Spike?

“Oz?”

“Y’alls know each other?” Lafayette asked, in shock.

From across the restaurant Oz could hear Spike cackle. “It’s Jojo the Talking Dog Boy! What are the odds!” He immediately stood up, heading towards Oz.

Last time he checked, Spike was a persona non grata to the Scoobies, all chipped up with no place to go. To have him here—in Bon Temps—walking towards him like he was an old friend may have actually been the strangest part of an already strange day.

With a laugh Spike came up behind Oz, patting him on the back. “Good to see you, mate!” Then, looking back at Wes, sitting at the table— _Wesley Wyndham-Price_ , but a far different Wes than Oz remembered—Spike shouted across the room. “Hey Wes, come and say hello to Willow’s dog boy!” he turned back to Oz. “Let me buy you a drink!”

Sam came in from the kitchen, just as confused as Lafayette, but with no concept from which to understand Spike, a vampire with bleached hair and a long dark jacket, buying a drink for Oz, the werewolf, like they were bosom buddies.

“What’s going on?” He asked, looking from Oz to Spike to Lafayette and finally to Emma, who seemed to be swept up in Spike’s good cheer and giggled when he vamped out at her with a growl. The Big Bad was using his bumpies to make a little girl laugh. Would wonders never cease?

“I uh... know these guys,” Oz said, looking at the effluent Spike and the now roguish Wes. He didn’t even know what to think about the woman in blue sitting with Wes, but he’d put a pin in it.

Sure, he knew these guys... but apparently, he didn’t know them at all.

**_Bibliothecam Magnam Godrici_ **

**(Shreveport, Louisiana)**

As a recent graduate of Oxford University, Dawn Summers had been in some pretty splendid libraries. Every college had its own library, but those paled when compared to the almighty Bodleian. True, the Bodleian Libraries themselves were a library system separated into 30 libraries across Oxford, but it was the Bodleian itself that was the greatest library Dawn had ever entered, and as an undergraduate, she had taken every opportunity to study in the Duke Humphrey’s wing and had her own special place in the Selden End.

Entering Godric’s library, however, was a transcendent experience in and of itself. She’d never been in a bigger personal library—she considered the library in the Scottish castle that served as training grounds for the Slayers Council to be a public library, even if it was for their exclusive use—but that wasn’t the only remarkable thing she found as she stepped into what she’d been told was once an indoor basketball court. This was the library of a _vampire_ , and there were chances it held books that not even the Bodleian had seen before.

“Isn’t it amazing?” Willow asked as she followed behind Dawn. She certainly agreed—two stories, shelves and shelves of books, an entire section dedicated to scrolls—Dawn knew Willow was in book heaven. As an aspiring Watcher herself Dawn was impressed, though libraries weren’t the end-all and be-all of her existence, as it was for Giles.

Speaking of Giles, Dawn watched him settle himself in front of an already large stack of books. He’d been busy today, and Willow and Andrew seemed just as preoccupied. She herself chose a comfortable couch upon which she dropped her laptop case, then began wandering through the stacks. She ran her fingertips down the spines of the books, pulled out one or another for a closer look.

Ever wondered what Herman Melville’s lost _Isle of the Cross_ was about? Somehow, this library had a copy.

Thomas Hardy’s _The Poor Man and the Lady_? Here was the manuscript.

And apparently Jane Austen had finished a draft of _Sanditon_ before she died, because the hand-written manuscript was kept neatly together in a box.

She looked deeper into the library—these books were older. She pulled out another manuscript box labeled “W. Shakespeare,” wondering what it would hold. A first folio?

No, even better: _Cardenio_ , a play inspired by Cervantes, performed for King James I—and never seen again.

And next to it? _Love’s Labors Won_.

“Giles, this place is insane,” she called back to the bookworms already at work. The riches of the library were too tempting for her to settle down just yet.

She headed towards the back wall—where the collection of scrolls was located. Floor-to-ceiling, Dawn looked at two stories of cubbies holding insulated round shipping cartons. She pulled one out at random, carefully opening it and pulling it out. It was clearly vellum, rolled in saffian leather treated with sumac and tied with catgut. Dawn put the carton down and untied the catgut, letting the pages unroll in front of her. She removed the leather binding, and stared, open-mouthed at what she saw.

“Hey Giles...” she called out. There was an echo to the library, the kind you’d always find in gymnasiums.

“Yes, Dawn?” He answered promptly, but he was clearly distracted.

“Have you ever seen a Da Vinci Codex?”

The library was silent.

“Excuse me, what?”

“I’m looking at what appears to be a Da Vinci codex, one I’ve never seen before.”

“Good God,” she heard Giles sigh and could imagine him polishing his glasses to collect himself. “You mean Eric Northman is the owner of an unknown Da Vinci codex?”

“Yep,” Dawn shouted, popping her “p.” “And it looks like he was well aware of vampires and werewolves.”

“We call it the Northman Codex,” another voice said, adding to the conversation. It was Eric’s progeny—his vampire kid, the snotty blonde who couldn’t say anything nice about anyone. “There should be another in there—that one’s called the _Codex Godrici._ ” Her Latin pronunciation was perfect, in spite of her Southern accent.

Dawn carried her treasure out towards the seating area to show Giles. Willow watched, gaping, and Andrew looked as if she held the Holy Grail or a limited-edition original Han Solo action figure.

With shaking hands Giles beheld the manuscript. The smell of leather and vellum filled Dawn’s nose as she looked over his shoulder. It was clearly the work of Da Vinci—the handwriting was correct—written backward, as he’d been left-handed—and a quick shuffle of paper showed the same meticulous anatomical drawings the renaissance man was known for, but these detailed the stages of a werewolf’s shift; the bumpies of a non-Authority vamp, like Spike.

The wrinkled face of The Master, who must be older than they think.

Pam, however, couldn’t be bothered. “Yeah, there’s a lot of neat shit in here,” she offered, “but you’re going to get lost unless you know what you’re looking for.” A well-manicured hand was placed delicately on her hip as she watched Giles with feigned indifference.

“Yes, yes,” he said, not looking away from the codex. “Quite right.” Dawn could see the physical pain he was in, tearing his eyes away from the codex to meet Pam’s. “Well, where do you suggest we start?”

Pam looked around at the gathered researchers, enthusiastic (Giles, Willow, Andrew, and herself) and not (everyone else, including Sookie’s brother—was he... special? Dawn wasn’t sure). “Tara, go to the card catalog, and look up anything under the keyword ‘Lilith.’” Pam waited for her progeny to heed her order, but Tara only looked confused.

“We use computers for that shit,” she said, crossing her arms in defiance.

“Don’t tell me none of you heathens know how to use a card catalog?” she sneered.

Dawn was terrified, but she raised her hand.

“Good. At least one of you isn’t useless.” She nodded towards the catalog itself, and Dawn hurried to do her bidding, quickly scanning the labels on the drawers and grabbing the appropriate one, pulling it all the way out and bringing it to the table.

“Very good. Now hand the cards to these cretins and hope to God they know how to find a call number.” Pam still terrified Dawn, but she did get a little thrill at earning her approval.

She handed cards out to Xander and Willow, Jessica, and Tara, who all had been in a library enough times to follow labeling and find call numbers. Jason Stackhouse, however, looked at his card, perplexed.

“What am I gonna do with this?” He asked Dawn.

“See this number?” She pointed to the call number. “We’re going to go into the stacks and find where this call number is located.” She took the card from him, leading him through the stacks to the correct location. She found a manuscript box with the correct Library of Congress call number and pulled it out.

“Was that some kind of witchcraft? Or magic?” Jason still appeared to be clueless. Dawn considered trying to explain a catalog system in small words Jason would understand but decided she didn’t have the patience for it. “Come with me.”

She carried the manuscript box back to the table, opening it up and reading the title of the book aloud. “ _Philosophical Analyses of Vampyre Religious Ritual_.” She pointed each word out to Jason. “Good, this one is in English... seventeenth-century English, but I think you’ll manage.” She sat him in a chair, ran over to her laptop bag, and pulled out a notebook and pen before going back to Jason.

“What I’m gonna have you do is read every page of this; do you think you can do that?”

“Uh, I guess... I mean, I’ve never finished a book or nothing...”

“Okay, you’re going to read every page, and any time someone mentions Lilith, you’re gonna write down the page number here.” She pointed to the notebook before demonstrating. “This is the title page... contents... okay, here’s the first page.” She scanned it quickly. “Right here?” she said, pointing out the word. “That says ‘Lilith,’ so you’re gonna go to the notepad and write ‘page 1.’ After that, we’ll have one of the grown-ups go through the book and do the actual research.”

“Still sounds like magic to me...” Jason groused as Dawn left him to his work.

“Giles, we should get everyone gloves if we’re going to be handling old books like this,” Dawn mentioned, “though I think there might be a stasis spell on the whole library—there’s no dust anywhere.”

“I like you, human.” She said, giving Dawn a once-over. “You wrangled Stackhouse like a professional cowgirl and know how to treat a book right.” It was clear Pam was complimenting her on how she put Jason to work, but there was something distinctly sexual about her tone.

“Uh, thanks?” She said.

Next to her, Jason was still grousing.

“If I’m gonna do research, shouldn’t I be doin’ research on Warlow? Got this big vamper library to use...” he was mostly complaining to himself, but someone obviously heard what he’d been muttering.

Quick as a flash, Eric’s sister Nora entered the library and zoomed over to Jason, leaving a gust of wind in her wake. She grabbed Jason by the jaw, lifting him bodily from his chair to look directly in his eyes.

“Warlow?” she asked. “What do you know about Warlow?”

Jason gulped as if he were looking at his death in the face.

“Uh, well... Sook said I hit my head, see? And I started seeing my Momma and Daddy, but they’ve been dead for, like twenty years or somethin,’ an’ they keep telling me I gotta protect Sookie from this fanger named Warlow who wants to take her.”

“Are you sure they said Warlow?”

“Uh, yeah... Mac-something. Mac-something Warlow.”

Nora put Jason down.

“Fuck,” she said and looked up to see everyone staring at her.

“Um... so, who’s Warlow?” Dawn asked. Again, she was terrified to speak up, but she was equally terrified of what Nora would do if she totally lost it.

“Macklyn Warlow is the modern name of the vampire that brought Lilith’s death the first time—he was a daywalker. She was resting in a cave, and he caused the cave roof to collapse during the day, exposing her to the sunlight—Magnus Linus Vellaureum. The Great Golden One.”

Nora was speaking as if to herself, but she caught Giles’s attention.

“Magnus Linus Vellaureum was an ancient ally of the Slayer—he had some older name, but medieval European texts call him Magnus Linus. He was some kind of immortal...”

“A daywalker sounds pretty immortal to me...” Xander interjected.

“If Magnus Linus Vellaureum was a daywalker, and he was an ally of the Slayer... maybe he’s still around, maybe he can help us in this fight against... Bilith.” Giles and Nora were staring at each other as if they’d just had a “EUREKA!” moment.

“Naw,” Jason Stackhouse interrupted. “Macklyn Warlow is no good. He’s gonna imprison Sookie and make her his fairy slave bride.” Whatever he was spouting was exactly the opposite of the conclusion Nora and Giles had reached.

“Could there be two Macklyn Warlows?” Willow asked.

“Jason, how exactly did you get the name Macklyn Warlow?” Nora questioned again as if something were wrong.

“Just as I said. Hit my head one minute, then I had Momma and Daddy tellin’ me I gotta kill vampers and save Sookie.” He sounded certain, and it being Jason, that was not necessarily a good thing.

“Well, I suppose we now have another search term, don’t we?” Giles settled back in his chair, deep in thought. It was as if he’d completely forgotten the lost Da Vinci Codex in his lap.

“On it,” Dawn said, heading to the card catalog.

**_Political Animals_ **

**(Shreveport, Louisiana)**

This was not the time for Nora to doubt him.

That thought kept racing through Eric’s mind, loud enough that he needed to stop dialing, slamming the phone back into its cradle.

Nora was questioning him, and this was exactly what he didn’t need right now. He already had a rather lofty to-do list. (1) Continue mainstreaming movement, (2) rebuild Vampire Authority, (3) earn back the humans’ trust (4) reach out to allies in the federal government, (5) find Bill fucking Compton, (6) kill Bill fucking Compton...

Even with all of these other tasks screaming at him to be completed, Nora was right. He was still far too focused on number 7.

Protect Sookie Stackhouse.

He sat back in his chair, raising a palm to his face. If he were human, he’d swear he was getting a migraine.

He was a fool. He knew it, and Nora knew it.

He was a fool for still caring, even when she’d made it clear she didn’t want him.

He had so much to do—he had a call into the Japanese manufacturers of TruBlood to see about finding every available empty bottling plant in North America to get TruBlood back on the market. He needed to contact kings and queens and convince them to keep their retinues mainstreaming—he had already called asking the Queen of the Pacific, one of the most liberal vampires out there for advice, as well as a call to Stan Davis of Texas to request his help as an ally of Godric’s.

And yet...

And yet...

And yet he couldn’t stop this desperate need to protect Sookie first.

Why was it fucking now that he’d suddenly become chivalrous?

Even back in its medieval heyday, he’d found chivalry to be bullshit. Chastely pining after some unattainable woman, trying desperately to earn her favor, even knowing you never had a chance? He’d leave that to fools like Plutarch and Dante. Fucking poets who searched for some ideal of the divine feminine, when they could be out fucking someone less than ideal. What was the point? No, the divine was not in Laura, it was not in Beatrice. More likely these paragons of womanly virtue were fucking someone else on the side while the poets did nothing but write more poetry and pine.

And yet here he was. Pining. Chivalrously. Like a poet.

He picked up a glass paperweight, tossed it from hand to hand.

He looked across the room, at a painting he’d once done while under the tutelage of a starving Vincent Van Gogh. A Viking longship tossed on a dark, impressionistic sea, in oil.

Van Gogh had told him his shading was absolute shit. He couldn’t find the correct blue for the sky—it had been centuries since he’d seen daylight himself, so how the fuck was he supposed to paint a daytime sky?

Anyway, Van Gogh was fucking insane. A great painter, but insane.

He tossed the glass paperweight back and forth, looked across the room at the framed painting.

With all his vampire strength, he hurled the glass paperweight towards the painting.

It landed with a crash of broken glass, hitting the wall hard enough to knock the painting off its hanging. It landed on the floor amidst the crushed glass with a satisfying thump.

Fucking chivalry.

“Well, fuck.”

He looked to the doorway where Pamela was staring at the broken painting.

“It occurs to me, Pamela, that you may have something in common with my sister.”

“Me? Have something in common with Dame Edna?”

“You share some opinions... and is Dame Edna the best you can do?”

“Should I refer to her as all the queens in England first before all the queens in drag?”

“It only seems proper.”

“Fine. Queen Victoria and I have nothing in common. She’s a bitch and a fanatic...”

“Tell me, how do you feel about Coco Chanel?”

“I have a very healthy appreciation for her, no fanaticism, not like Queen Anne has for vampire religion.”

“Queen Anne. Much better.”

She came into the room, placing a hip on his desk.

“So, what’s eating you?”

He sighed, knowing the subject would only earn him Pamela’s ire, so he moved on to another something else.

“I’m waiting on a call from Senator Jones,” he said as if that were trouble enough to lead to his destructive behavior.

“Fine, keep it to yourself,” she said. He never could fool her.

“How goes the research?” he asked.

“Well, kids these days are too used to computers and have no idea how a real library works.”

“And this is a subject near and dear to your heart?”

“Not at all, it’s just annoying to give orders and have these children gaping at you as if you were speaking Latin.” She rolled her eyes. “Though I will say the Slayer’s tasty sister does know her way around a card catalog, and we should refer to her as Mother Theresa because she tried to help Jason Stackhouse, not that it did any good.”

“Yes. I haven’t decided, and I could use your opinion—”

“Yes?”

“Is Jason Stackhouse... _slow_?”

Pam guffawed. “Maybe, but I am certain he was dropped on his head as a baby. And hit his head one too many times in football. And even now a little bump had him seeing visions of his dead parents.”

Eric’s eyes narrowed. “Hallucinations?”

“I don’t know, and I really don’t care. He was spouting off about some vampire taking his sister, and then _your sister_ decided to go off on him.”

“I’m pretty certain we will all ‘go off’ on Jason Stackhouse before this is over.” As a matter of fact, there were plenty of reasons to go off on Sookie’s brother. “So, a vampire taking his sister?”

“Mommy and Daddy had a warning that Macklyn Warlow was going to kidnap Sookie.”

“Macklyn Warlow is the daywalker.”

“So I’ve heard. And apparently back in the day he was BFFs with the slayers.”

“And he’s coming after Sookie?”

“Look Eric, I know she has you by your balls, but we’re not going to give credence to Jason fucking Stackhouse’s hallucinogenic ravings. Not when too much other shit is going on.”

“Fair enough.”

Their musings about the elder Stackhouse were interrupted by the phone ringing.

“Northman,” he answered.

“What is going on, Eric?” It was Waylon Jones.

“As I’m sure you’ve seen, Waylon, the vampire world has gone to hell.”

“It certainly has. Now, what do you propose to do about it?” Waylon was good at cutting through the bullshit. Eric had always admired the man, who spent his life prosecuting hate crimes as the state’s attorney general before winning his Senate seat as a Democrat running in a state as red as a firetruck. There were extenuating circumstances—those pictures of his opponent in a Klan robe came out just in time for voters to reject him—and he surely had a battle ahead to keep his seat, but he was doing as much good as he could while his run lasted.

“I was recently appointed a Chancellor of the Authority, and with certain events that recently led to a turnover in Authority leadership, my sister Nora Gainsborough has now taken over as Guardian.”

“Turnover,” Waylon said dryly, clearly unimpressed. “That’s one way to put it. I suppose another way would be everything was fucked, there was a bloody battle, y’all went off killing each other, and she was the last man standing?”

“You certainly have a good grasp on the situation,” Eric answered casually as if they were speaking about something other than a bunch of vampires ending each other and the Authority building going down in a flaming conflagration.

“Eric, I do consider you a friend, and I appreciate your donations to my political career, but I just don’t know what you want me to do.”

“Nora and I plan on salvaging the Authority and the mainstreaming movement, Waylon, and we’re going to need allies to help sell us to the humans again.”

Waylon was silent for a moment.

“Y’all need allies.”

“Yes.”

Waylon sighed. “Now Eric, you know I got an uphill battle to keep this seat, so right now I gotta fake it and pretend I’m one of them real conservative Democrats so all the rednecks vote for me again.”

That was Waylon Jones. He didn’t pull his punches, but when it mattered, he could put on the genteel Southern charm like a drag costume. It was as easy as bringing his wife Cheryl along on his arm—it was an open secret she was his beard and Jeffrey, his chief-of-staff, was Waylon’s longtime lover. Most Louisianans just didn’t want to believe he could possibly be gay, in a willfully ignorant way that always reminded Eric of people’s love for Liberace. How dare they suggest such a beloved figure was queer as fuck?

Waylon helped them along in denying it, pulling the wool over the eyes of the voters of Louisiana. Republicans saw him as an ally, never realizing being a bipartisan centrist democrat was an act. He was no moderate, and moderation was something unheard of by the real Waylon Jones, who loved nothing more than hiding out at Fangtasia in BDSM wear with Jeffrey on his arm.

“I understand, Waylon,” Eric was let down, but at least it was done gently. “Keeping you in the senate is important.”

“Oh, honey!” Waylon interrupted. “I’m not gonna leave you hanging! Now, I talked to Miss Betsey today about what a terrible hit vampire rights are gonna take because of this TruBlood shortage, and you know what she said to me?”

“What?” Eric asked, recognizing he was speaking of Senator Betsey Mann of Massachusetts, whose leftist positions were those Waylon wished he could take publicly. They’d spoken of “Miss Betsey” before.

“Well, she asked me if there was anything she could do to help.”

Eric raised his eyebrows. “Betsey Mann?”

“Yes, Miss Betsey. I’ll be giving her a call tomorrow, telling her about my vampire friend who wants to work with the federal government to keep up mainstreaming and bring peace to the humans and the vampires.” Eric caught the joke—he was a peacenik in the same way Waylon was a conservative Christian.

Eric smiled. “Very good, Waylon.”

“So, you’re gonna get in touch with Miss Betsey’s people and work on that vampire agenda, right?”

“Yes. Thank you, Waylon. Very much.”

“Now, you just keep a booth open for me at your bar next time I’m in Shreveport, okay?”

“I look forward to seeing you and Jeffrey there again.”

“And tell Miss Pam I want her opinion on Dolce and Gabbana’s fall line. Cheryl doesn’t know if she can pull the Dolce look off.” Cheryl Jones, Waylon’s so-called “trophy wife,” was a Southern Belle of the highest water, sometimes serving as Waylon’s personal Barbie doll, and a sometime lover of Pam’s. They’d gone to New York Fashion Week together a few times, and Cheryl loved Pam’s fashion advice.

“I’ll have Pam call her next time she’s in New Orleans shopping,” Eric said.

“All right now. It’s almost dawn, so I imagine you’ll be going to bed soon.”

“I will. You take care, Waylon, and I’ll be making another donation to your reelection campaign tomorrow night.”

“As if you wouldn’t! Sleep tight now y’all.” Waylon hung up, and Eric looked over at Pam.

“I’ll be needing a full write up of Senator Betsey Mann tomorrow night, Pamela,” Eric ordered.

Pam met his smile. “Of course. And I’ll text Cheryl—I think Oscar’s a better bet for her this fall.” She turned and left his office.

Eric swiveled in his seat, looking back at the broken painting. He texted Lavinia, asking to get it fixed.

He went to his day rest, wondering what Senator Mann’s ultra-progressive, intersectional feminist thoughts on chivalry were. He smiled.


End file.
